US Speaks Of ‘Deep Engagement’ Over Iran
Two top United States officials are due this month to visit Israel’s new government, but analysts are not expecting new US regional initiatives.
Two top United States officials are due this month to visit Israel’s new government, but analysts are not expecting new US regional initiatives.
Jake Sullivan, the US National Security Advisor, said Monday in Mexico, accompanying President Joe Biden, that Iran would be a “substantial topic of conversation” for his trip. Dates were still being worked out, a US security spokesman said.
Sullivan said the two sides would have “the opportunity to engage deeply…on the threat posed by Iran.” Benjamin Netanyahu said it was “time for Israel and the US to be on the same page.”
Antony Blinken, the US Secretary of State, is also due in Israel this month, but officials up to Biden have intimated that their primary focus is not on the Middle East, but with the Russia-Ukraine war including the supply of Iranian drones to Russia and efforts to manage relations with China. Ben Shapiro, a former US ambassador to Israel, told the Jerusalem Post that the Sullivan and Biden visits did not “mean the Biden administration has changed its approach on where its highest priorities are – which is not in the Middle East.”
Sullivan reiterated Monday that while US policy aimed at reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), this was not a focus for US officials. Some analysts argue US, while shifting energies elsewhere, has adopted a more militaristic approach inasserting a willingness – as the July joint statement with Israel put – to “use all elements of its national power” to ensure that “Iran does not acquire a nuclear weapon.”
Sullivan also said Monday that Iran could be contributing to war crimes in Ukraine by providing drones to Russia.
While this all lessens tension with Netanyahu, a vehement JCPOA opponent and supporter of President Donald Trump in pulling the US from the agreement in 2018, it suggests Washington is happy to offer Israel forms of military cooperation that may restrain any notions of a military attack on Iran while enabling the US, effectively, to ‘spy’ on Israel.
Clear nerves in Washington
At the same time, recent US statements of support for the ‘two state solution’ for Israel-Palestine show clear nerves that Netanyahu’s new right-wing government may both enflame the occupied West Bank and undermine the Washington-backed ‘normalization’ agreements Israel has signed with some Arab states.
Itamar Ben Gvir, the new ultra-Zionist security minister who controversially visited the al-Aqsa mosque in Israeli-occupied east Jerusalem on taking office, Sunday banned public displays of the Palestinian flag as showing “identification with a terrorist organization.”
The government also froze $40 million in revenue due to the Palestinian Authority (PA). Netanyahu defended both moves as a response to the late December United Nations vote asking for an International Court of Justice opinion on the 56-year Israeli military occupation. While Israeli police routinely remove the flag, especially at protests, it has officially been tolerated since the 1994 establishment of the PA, and the decision has sparked fears of continuing unrest and violence that saw 146 Palestinians killed in the West Bank in 2022.
Bahrain, Egypt, Morocco and the UAE turned up in Abu Dhabi Monday for a two-day steering committee of the ‘Negev Forum,’ under which the Arab states meet Israel and the US. But Jordan, whose ‘normalization’ with Israel goes back to 1994, stayed away. Bahrain, Egypt, Morocco and the UAE all voted for the US resolution – as did Iran.
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.