The German foreign ministry has been criticized for its continued funding of a consultation firm - which is said to be linked to the Islamic Republic - under a two-year contract worth €900,000.
German MP Norbert Röttgen, who previously served as a Chair of the Bundestag Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a tweet that the German Federal Foreign Office is still financing the Carpo thinktank, an institute led by Adnan Tabatabai who allegedly lobbies for the Islamic Republic, under the two-year contract.
Adnan Tabatabai is co-founder and CEO of the Berlin-based Center for Applied Research in Partnership with the Orient (CARPO), and is the son of Sadeq Tabatabaei, the brother-in-law of the Islamic Republic’s founder Rouhollah Khomeini who served as Iran’s deputy prime minister from 1979 to 1980. Adnan is known in international media as an Iran expert who supports the regime.
He has on several occasions talked about normalizing relations between the West and the Islamic Republic and is in favor of reviving the 2015 nuclear deal or the JCPOA. He is consulted by the German Federal Foreign Office, members of the German Bundestag, political foundations as well as journalists and authors.
The move seems contradictory to Berlin’s policies of pressuring the Islamic Republic over its human rights violations. Debate still rages in Germany over listing Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as ‘terrorists,’ with Röttgen tweeting “You have to Decide Now.”
Rottgen, a member of the Christian Democratic Union, has been at loggerheads with Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, a Green, since Baerbock announced October 31 that the European Union was considering sanctioning the Guards (IRGC).
Qods Aviation Industries was itself sanctioned in November. The US also designated Friday the director of Iran’s Aerospace Industries Organization over its role in manufacturing Iran’s ballistic missiles.
“We will continue to use every tool at our disposal to deny [Russian President Vladimir] Putin the weapons that he is using to wage his barbaric and unprovoked war on Ukraine,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in a statement. The action was taken, said the Treasury, under Executive Order 13382, from 2005, ‘Blocking Property of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferators and Their Supporters.’
The US argues that supply of drones from Iran violates a provision in United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231, which barred Tehran from trading certain kinds of weapons – including drones “capable of delivering at least a 50kg payload to a range of at least 300km.”But the drones the US and Ukrainian say Iran have sent carry a slightly lighter load.
While Friday’s action may do little - any US assets of those designated can be frozen - it illustrates the Ukraine crisis changing calculations in Washington over Iran policy. The administration of President Joe Biden took office in January 2021 ostensibly committed to restoring the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, but has shifted its focus towards sanctions over Tehran’s links with Russia and its treatment of internal protests.
‘Pure damage’
In Tehran, opponents of the 2015 agreement, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) take heart. Saeed Jalili, top security official under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has argued the JCPOA brought little inward investment and was “pure damage” even before the US withdrew in 2018.
Jalili advocates a ‘resistance economy,’ based on domestic production and lowering import dependence. But while Iranian domestic employment picked up slightly after the US in 2018 left the JCPOA and imposed ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions according to government figures, some economists suggested this was more reaction to circumstance, including the falling rial, than any strategy.
Likewise, with ‘maximum pressure’ stymying the Rouhani government’s efforts of attracting western European investment, including energy majors, Iran turned elsewhere, an approach crystalized in President Ebrahim Raisi championing a ‘turn east.’
But many analysts argue that the Ukraine crisis – although regime officials forlornly hoped it would make Europe desperate for Iranian energy – has accelerated Iran-Russia rapprochement, which both sides say they would like to base on economics as well as security.
Stoking Iranian skepticism towards Russia
The Washington Institute this week published a policy paper by senior fellow Henry Rome arguing the US should “stoke longstanding Iranian skepticism towards Russia” to combat the “tightening of ties” triggered by the Ukraine crisis. Rome cited November’s statement from 35 former Iranian diplomats calling Tehran’s reaction a “grave mistake” and reiterated allegations that Russia had leaked to the media details about shipments of Iranian drones.
The US, Rome argued, should “emphasize the potential for friction and mistrust between the two partners” to “generate the most intense reaction in Tehran,” as well as extending sanctions over drone shipment, and encouraging European States to designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) to “impose a greater economic cost on Tehran for supporting Russia.”
European Union foreign ministers are expected to discuss new Iran sanctions at the end of January. In letter published in the newspaper Volkskrant on Friday, leaders of ten Dutch parliamentary parties called for the IRGC to be designated along with officials and their families.
Netanyahu the mediator?
In other fall-out from Ukraine, an aide to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Israeli television Thursday that new Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was a potential mediator with Russia. Mykhailo Podolyak said he had “no doubt” Netanyahu “understands precisely what modern wars are and what is the essence of mediation under these conditions.”
While the Ukraine war has boosted Israeli arms sales due to poorly-performing Russian weapons, Netanyahu - who touted his warm relationship with Putin in 2019 elections by slapping a giant picture of the Russian president outside the Likud Party headquarters - has said he was approached while in opposition to mediate but deferred to the government.
At the time the outer walls of the UK embassy in Tehran were defaced by anti-British slogans. This week, hardliner elements did the same to the French embassy after the satirical Paris magazine Charlie Hebdo published a special issue with caricatures of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
The issue of downgrading Tehran's ties with London had also been discussed at the Iranian parliament in 2009 and 2010. In 2010 ultraconservative lawmakers demanded severing ties with London altogether. The motion was sent to the Foreign Relations and National Security Committee of the Majles, but did not go any further.
Esmail Kowsari, an IRGC general who is a member of the parliament (Majles), demanded the implementation of the law against the UK and also called on the government to reconsider its ties with Germany and France.
In 2011, the move was motivated by a set of UK sanctions against Iran and in late 2022 Iranian hardliners began a series of acts of vandalism against the British embassy in Tehran as the United Kingdom, Germany and France took the lead in escalating international actions against Iran's human rights violation and drone deliveries to Russia, as well as passing a resolution at the United Nations to set up a fact-finding committee about Tehran's violations of human rights.
Kowsari told Etemad Online in December that the three European states have sinister ideas about the Iranian nation and their anti-Iranian moves have proven this. Kowsari also said in an interview with the IRGC-linked Fars News Agency: "We wish to expand our diplomatic relations, but we do not want this relation at any price."
Thursday morning in Tehran, vigilante groups vandalized parts of the French embassy in Tehran in revenge for French satirical publication Charlie Hebdo publishing a special issue on Wednesday with cartoons about Khamenei under the title: "Let's take back the mullahs to where they come from."
The Iranian foreign minister called the cartoons "rude and unethical" and summoned the French ambassador to the Foreign Ministry to hand him a note of protest mindless of the fact that unlike the Islamic Republic, the French government does not intervene in the affairs of independent press. Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian threatened to give a firm and effective response to the satirical weekly. Meanwhile, Iran shut down the French "Iranian Studies Center" in Tehran, a prestigious research center whose works are respected by Iranian and French scholars.
The 2011 legislation was followed by an arson attack on the British embassy in Tehran by vigilante groups who were characterized by the government-owned press as "students," but independent sources questioned the characterization. Iran's -then- deputy foreign ministers Hassan Ghashghavi and Ali Ahani went to the Majles to convince the lawmakers that cutting ties with London was not in the country's interest. The Majles subsequently added a clause to the legislation which said that ties with the UK could be normalized if the UK changed its policies toward Iran.
In 2017 Ahmadinejad called the legislation and the attack on the British embassy a move that provided pretexts to the United Kingdom to take action against Iran. He also accused the Iranian state television of broadcasting live the attack on the British embassy.
Hardliner members of the parliament prevented -then- UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw from taking part in Hassan Rouhani's inauguration ceremony in 2013. But eventually, three years later the two countries’ embassies were reopened after a relatively long closure.
Speaking to the press Wednesday, Price, the State Department spokesman, said the United States had “no reason to put any stock or faith into the statements” made recently by Iranian officials that they were keen to resume talks over reviving the 2015 agreement, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action).
“There was a deal to mutually return to the JCPOA that was on the table that was approved by all parties” in September, Price said. “That ultimately went nowhere only because the Iranians weren’t prepared to accept it…The JCPOA hasn’t been on the agenda for some months now.
“There is no denying that Iran presents one of the most complex challenges we face… Its nuclear program has been the focus of successive administrations. Its malign activities throughout the Middle East and in some cases potentially even beyond has been the focus of successive administrations…And now what it is doing to its own people – the repression……[and] the security assistance that it’s providing to Russia – all of these…. represent…one of the most difficult challenges we face.”
While failure to agree JCPOA restoration in either year-long multilateral talks in Vienna or subsequent bilateral US-Iran contacts reflected gaps between Iran and the US over JCPOA restoration, Price’s reference to complexities reflects new complications.
‘On the agenda, but not on the table’
Firstly, Iran’s supply of military drones to Russia has shifted the approach of the three European JCPOA signatories, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. While the European Union foreign policy chief Joseph Borrell has continued diplomatic efforts with Iran, meeting Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian in Amman in December, European officials have intimated that Iran’s involvement with Russia precludes JCPOA revival.
Europe long held to the JCPOA logic of separating Iran’s nuclear program from other issues, but it has agreed with the US that the drones supply – even if, as Iran says, before the February outbreak of the latest Ukraine hostilities – violates a JCPOA clause restricting Iran trading certain categories of arms.
European states have joined the US in levying new sanctions against Iran over both the drones and Tehran’s response to recent unrest. Hossein Mousavian, former Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister and nuclear negotiator, told Al-Monitor this meant the JCPOA was now “on the agenda but not on the table.”
Mousavian said the “Europeans are playing a more active role to create an international consensus against Iran, more because of the Ukraine issue…[and] compared to the US…[had] become ‘more Catholic than the Pope’ in advancing hostile policies against Iran.”
A second complication is the return to office in Israel of Benjamin Netanyahu with a coalition including ultra-Zionists, which has created a new challenge for Washington. While Netanyahu, who has for decades portrayed Iran as on the threshold of a nuclear weapon, is playing up his warm relationship with President Joe Biden, there are clear US nerves.
‘Security and stability’
A Pentagon read-out of the first telephone call, late Wednesday, between US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and new Israeli counterpart Yoav Gallant featured Austin warning Israel not to “undermine security and stability in the West Bank,” a reference to speeding up Jewish settlements in occupied Palestinian land.
The US read-out referred to agreement “on the need to work together to address…regional challenges, including threats posed by Iran’s destabilizing activities,” while the Israeli defense department statement said Gallant had “emphasized in the conversation Israel’s commitment to do whatever it takes to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons...”
Something similar happened with Monday’s call between Antony Blinken, US Secretary of State, and Eli Cohen, the Israeli foreign minister. A right-wing Israeli newspaper cited sources that Blinken had proclaimed the JCPOA dead. The US read-out of the call made no mention of this, and a US official subsequently denied it.
Security analysts have also discussed whether growing US-Israel military co-operation, highlighted this week by joint air drills, makes an attack on Iran more likely or is rather a means to rein in a Netanyahu-led Israel.
Recently, French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo has launched an international competition -- called "Mullahs Get Out" -- to produce caricatures of Khamenei, as a “symbol of backward-looking, narrow-minded, intolerant religious power.”
On Tuesday, French daily Le Monde published one of the cartoons, saying that Charlie Hebdo is publishing a special issue on the occasion of the eighth-year anniversary of the Paris terrorist attacks, mocking Khamenei in support of the protests in Iran. Charlie Hebdo has been the target of three terrorist attacks: in 2011, 2015, and 2020. All of them were presumed to be in response to a number of cartoons that it published controversially depicting Islam’s Prophet Muhammad. In the 2015 attack, 12 people were killed.
“The freedom to which every human being aspires is incompatible with the archaism of religious thought and with submission to every supposedly spiritual authority, of which Ali Khamenei is the most deplorable example,” Charlie Hebdo wrote.
On Wednesday, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian censured the controversial French magazine Charlie Hebdo for publishing caricatures of Khamenei, warning of an “effective and decisive response.” The satirical magazine recently launched an international competition -- called "Mullahs Get Out" -- to produce caricatures of Khamenei, as a “symbol of backward-looking, narrow-minded, intolerant religious power.”
As part of the special "January 7" issue, commemorating the anniversary of the 2015 Charlie Hebdo attack, the satirical weekly chose to support Iranian men and women and to "beat the mullahs," Le Monde said, adding that the paper was able to view 35 drawings selected from the 300 sent to the Charlie Hebdo editorial office, including from Iran, Turkey, the United States, Senegal and Australia.
The magazine advised that a cartoon of Khamenei should be the "funniest and meanest" possible, noting that "Cartoonists and caricaturists have a duty to help support Iranians in their struggle as they fight for their freedom, by ridiculing this religious leader who represents the past and casting him into history’s garbage bin.”
“One cartoon shows Khamenei being punched with the slogan 'Women, Life, Freedom,' while another depicts a mullah being crushed under a heel. Among the very political drawings, the supreme leader is also depicted as Marilyn Monroe, whose dress is lifted by the wind of the headscarves that women have freed themselves from. In another, armed with stones, they pommel him,” Le Monde described some of the works.
Since the beginning of the current wave of protests in mid-September, Charlie Hebdo also published other cartoons of Khamenei, one of which prompted the Islamic Republic’s Foreign Ministry to summon the French chargé d'affaires in Tehran. In the cartoon, Khamenei is depicted with bloody hands and a turban and an attire with the logo of clothing manufacturing company Nike and its motto: Just Do It.
The landscape of Iranians’ protests against the regime has never been this openly full of insults and slogans against the country’s ruler. Chanting “Death to the Dictator” and “Death to Khamenei” was still a taboo until very recently even during the protests. But now, making fun of the authorities and even the dead ones – which is extremely frowned upon in Iranian society – has become a common way of protests.
In December, a famous Iranian actor lashed out at Khamenei saying at least try to be a “personable dictator”. He compared Khamenei with other dictators such as Francisco Franco, Mao Zedong, Joseph Stalin and Benito Mussolini, saying he is “mentally ill” just like his “colleagues”.
January 3 marks the death anniversary of the commander of IRGC’s Quds (Qods) Force -- a division primarily responsible for extraterritorial military and clandestine operations. He was one the most revered figures of the Islamic regime and was killed in a drone strike ordered by former President Donald Trump. His body was so mutilated in the explosion that many social media users described him as a “Cutlet” after his death, an Iranian dish resembling hamburgers mixed with potatoes. Despite extravagant ceremonies to honor his memory, Iranians are burning his banners and statues all over the country and even named January 3 as World Cutlet Day.