Pundits In Tehran Discuss Iran’s Dreams Of Regional Supremacy
A former Iranian lawmaker says "the Islamic Republic expected regional countries to recognize it as the gendarme of the region just like before the 1979 revolution."
A former Iranian lawmaker says "the Islamic Republic expected regional countries to recognize it as the gendarme of the region just like before the 1979 revolution."
Ahmad Ardestani told Rouydad24 website in Tehran that "regardless of Iran's attempts, regional countries shaped their attitude after the Islamic revolution based on the United States’ view about the new Iran."
"The Islamic Republic created the Resistance Front to showcase its regional hegemony." Resistance Front is the regime’s officials' jargon about the anti-US alliance it has created in the region, by supporting militant proxy groups in Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon and Syria.
According to Ardestani, the Islamic Republic uses the ‘Resistance Front’ to portray Tehran as a regional superpower. He said, no matter who likes it or not, Iran is at loggerheads with the United States and that explains its interaction with countries such as Russia and China.
"Unfortunately, Europe and the United States pushed Iran toward the East with their ‘maximum pressure policy’. Now Iran has strategic ties with Russia and China while it has failed to maintain a logical relationship with the West," Ardestani said.
Meanwhile, Mehdi Motaharnia, an academic in Tehran questioned the concept of regional supremacy. "Iran's regional influence cannot help Tehran if it is not used to create a peaceful life for Iranians." What the Iranian government needs at the current juncture is legitimacy, he reiterated.
Speaking about the interests of the Arab side, Ardestani said that after the suspected Iranian attack on Saudi oil facilities in September 2019 and Iran’s continuing support for the Houthis in Yemen, the Riyadh as well as others in the region including Kuwait, Bahrain and the UAE, concluded that instead of “bribing the United States” for protection, they should get closer to Tehran.
Ardestani added that in such a situation Iran needs to establish logical relations with the West. However, he failed to observe, or living in Iran prudently skipped the fact that Tehran’s policy toward the West is mainly driven by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s unwavering anti-US and anti-West ideology.
Elsewhere in the interview Ardestani said that both Saudi Arabia and Iran benefit from their recent agreement brokered by China, as this makes Riyadh immune to US blackmails, and gives Tehran an opportunity to present itself as a confident and stable state. He further characterized Iran and Saudi Arabia as the two wings that keep the region stable.
Critics of the Biden Administration say that its cold attitude toward Saudi rulers pushed Riyadh to diversify its foreign policy options, by restoring ties with Tehran and eliminating a constant threat.
He expressed hope that the agreement with Saudis could be a prelude to a nuclear deal with the West. Ardestani said in a controversial comment that "Now when Iran has stopped just short of making the [nuclear] bomb, it is the best time to revive the JCPOA."
He added that Iranian expats wish to suggest to the US Congress and others that Iran is not stable as protests are raging in the streets, but the West's intelligence agencies have reassured governments that the claim about Iran's instability are not true.
However, Motaharnia highlighted the instability of the regime. "If you have international influence and even if you are a regional superpower, but your society is not peaceful and is in pain, not only your apparent supremacy is not important, but it is useless and probably only good for propaganda."
Motaharnia reiterated that the Iranian government is facing multiple challenges that have eroded its legitimacy and have made it isolated in the region and within the international community. These challenges are exerting pressure on the government as the people want to separate the state from religion and criticize the government for its inefficiency.
He said Iran needs to change, but changing is difficult for a government which sees itself over and above everything else in the society.
The judiciary’s news website, Mizan, said Friday Abbas (Mojahed) Kourkour has been sentenced to death for the killing of Kian Pourfalk in Izeh in southwestern Iran on November 15, adding that the sentence could be appealed.
Kian and his family were targeted by plainclothesmen during a night of protests in Izeh while they were in their car. Kian’s father was also paralyzed as a result of serious injuries he sustained during the attack.
His mother, Zaynab Molaei-Rad, who was also in the car, has always insisted that it was plainclothes agents, not Kourkour and his friends, who sprayed their car with bullets and killed her son.
A former lawmaker from Izeh, Hojjatollah Darvishpour, confirmed the account Kian’s mother gave at her son’s funeral and said she had provided all the details about those who shot and moved her son and husband to the Red Crescent and then hospital.
Belgian politician Tomas Roggerman has accepted political sponsorship of Kourkour.
Kourkour’s family also insist that he was not anywhere near the site of the shooting and was tortured into “confessing” to the shooting in which Kian was killed. His mother, Golanbar Kourkour, has appealed to Iranians to help prevent his son from being innocently executed.
Six others including three other children, were also shot dead in Izeh during the same night but authorities claim the attacks were perpetrated by “terrorists” who wanted to discredit the regime.
Shocked by the indiscriminate killing of children including Kian during nationwide protests that began in mid-September many Iranians began to call the Islamic Republic a “child-murderer regime”. Tens of other children, including a two-year-old, were killed by security forces during the protests.
Kourkour’s mother appealing to Iranians to save his son’s life.
Kourkour and three other men, their families claim, armed themselves to take revenge on the government for the killings of November 25 in Izeh and hid in a village near the city but were ambushed by security forces four days later.
During an hours-long standoff in which security forces used heavy machine guns and anti-tank grenade launchers, two members of the group were killed and Kourkour and another man were arrested.
Over 500 protesters and bystanders were killed by security forces during the protests across Iran. Authorities have only taken responsibility for the killing of one protester, the 27-year-old Mehran Sammak, who was shot by a senior police officer in his car in northern Iran on November 29.
The regime executed four young men for their alleged role in the killings of government agents in December and January after hasty trials.
Kian’s mother with the mother of the man she says is wrongfully accused of killing her son.
The accused were not allowed to have access to defense lawyers before and during their trials. Many believe that protesters’ death sentences were based on “torture-tainted confessions”. Several other protesters have been sentenced to death in similar circumstances.
Death sentences based on torture-tainted confessions of the accused are not uncommon. Iran International has learned that currently two men, 19-year-old Farhad Beigi Garousi and 34-year-old Gholamreza Rasaei, have been tortured to confess to the killing of an intelligence official in Sahneh in Kermanshah Province in western Iran on November 18.
Locals say the officer Nader Beyrami was killed in a clash with mourners when he and his forces raided a funeral ceremony for a local poet and musician to prevent the ceremony from turning into anti-government protests.
Rasaei’s family say they have witnesses who will testify that he had not been present at the scene of the killing.
The deceased and both accused belong to the Yarsan religion which has many followers among the Kurdish population of the region. Many Yarsanis hide their religion for the fear of persecution.
According to Rouydad 24, which was temporarily blocked by the country’s authorities for allegedly anti-regime sentiment in March, China is one of Iran's biggest debtors while Iraq owes Tehran about $11 billion for electricity and gas exports. South Korea has about $7 billion of Iran’s oil revenues frozen.
All these countries are unable to unfreeze the Islamic Republic’s money because the regime is under several rounds of US sanctions, and they would not jeopardize their ties with Washington for the sake of paying Iran’s debts.
The issue of Iran’s blocked funds has come to fore again following the International Court of Justice (ICE) rejection last week of Tehran’s legal bid to free up $1.75 billion of its assets frozen by US court rulings. The world court said that it did not have jurisdiction to rule on the Iranian claim linked to the assets of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) that were blocked to be paid in compensation to victims of a 1983 bombing in Lebanon and other attacks linked to the Islamic Republic.
In a report published in 2022, the International Monetary Fund reported that by the end of April 2020, the amount of Iran's blocked assets around the world had reached $115.4 billion. And according to Alena Douhan, the UN Special Rapporteur on Unilateral Coercive Measures who visited Iran in May 2022, the Islamic Republic has between $100 billion and $120 billion trapped in foreign accounts because of US sanctions.
“I urge states to unfreeze the assets of the Central Bank of Iran in accordance with customary norms of international law,” Douhan said in Tehran, drawing criticism by several human rights defenders, such as Iranian Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Shirin Ebadi, and London-based human rights lawyer Shadi Sadr.
Sadr called Douhan a “mouthpiece for the Islamic Republic” and “a disgrace to UN human rights experts.” The role of this rapporteur was created at the UN Human Rights Council by the adoption of a resolution proposed by Iran on behalf of Non-Aligned Movement in 2014, and is the only UN rapporteur who was allowed to visit the country in about 20 years.
Iran’s properties abroad can be divided into two general categories: the state properties that are usually managed under the supervision of the Central Bank of Iran, and the properties of companies that are linked to the government, thus considered state-owned.
Moreover, Iran has shares in some companies such as Germany’s Mercedes-Benz, France’s Eurodif -- a multinational nuclear enrichment facility – and Aqaba oil pipeline in Jordan bought during the Pahlavi era. The country also owns lands and buildings such as the historical building of the Iranian Embassy in Washington and properties in the US and Canada belonging to the Alavi Foundation, the successor organization to the Pahlavi Foundation that was a nonprofit group used by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to advance Iran's charitable interests.
The Islamic Republic – especially since the administration of President Ebrahim Raisi began -- claims that it is selling more oil, gas, and electricity but apparently the revenues are piling up in Chinese, Iraqi or other countries’ banks. Unless the regime finds a way to revive its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, it is not expected that Tehran would access its frozen funds, especially now that prominent opposition figures have been calling on world countries to allow the funds to be used to support the striking workers of the energy industry in the country.
Axios reported on Monday that the Biden Administration has been entertaining the idea of a partial nuclear deal with Iran and has discussed it with allies, a claim that seems very disappointing for the Iranian protesters who have been holding regular anti-regime rallies since September, when the regime’s hijab police beat to death 22-year-old Mahsa Amini.
The only other way that the Islamic Republic can push other countries to unblock the assets is through its policy of hostage taking, something that is historically the source of contention between the Islamic Republic and the US as well as other countries. Time and again, reports surface in Iranian media that some of the frozen funds will be imminently freed in exchange for Iran releasing one or some of the foreign nationals it has imprisoned during the years on trumped up charges such as espionage.
The editor of hardliner daily Kayhan, Hossein Shariatmadari, who is known to be the unofficial mouthpiece of the Supreme Leader, keeps suggesting that Iran should block the entry of ships and oil tankers into the Persian Gulf via the Strait of Hormuz to put pressure on the countries blocking the regime’s money to repatriate Iran's oil money.
What happens from here is unclear, but Iran is finding that even its allies will not make exceptions for its ever increasing debts.
According to the sources, the attacks on March 30 and 31 hit intelligence centers operated by Iran and Lebanese militant outfit Hezbollah in cooperation with the Syrian government forces in the al-Mazzah municipal district in the capital Damascus and the attack on April 4 targeted Al-Qusayr airport near the Lebanese border.
Vowing revenge, the Islamic Republic has admitted that two IRGC “military advisors” -- namely Meqdad Meqdani (Meghdad Meghdani) and Milad Haydari – were killed in the late March attacks. According to the sources, the attacks seemed to be Israel's response to a foiled terrorist attack a week ago in the Megiddo area inside Israel by a person who, according to Israel, was sent by Lebanon's Hezbollah.
The sources added that both Meqdani and Haydari were IRGC intelligence officers in Syria, noting that a group of senior members of the IRGC Intelligence Organization, including former head of the body Hossein Taeb, visited the bereaved families of the two “martyrs” in the past few days.
Iran usually does not report the extent of its casualties in Syria and some observers say that acknowledging the deaths of two IRGC personnel can mean that Tehran wanted to lay the ground for retaliation. Iran International sources are of the opinion that the IRGC forces are planning an imminent attack inside Israel with the help of Hezbollah forces.
On Thursday, dozens of rockets were fired into Israeli territory from Hezbollah-controlled southern Lebanon, where several displacement camps hosting Palestinian refugees and armed factions are located.
According to Israeli-based news channel i24NEWS, Hezbollah has told Lebanese media that Palestinian groups were behind the rocket attacks.
Three security sources also told Reuters that Palestinian factions based in Lebanon were behind the rocket attacks on Thursday afternoon across the disputed border into Israel.
The Israeli military is still assessing the situation following Thursday's rocket strikes from Lebanon but is working on the assumption that Palestinian factions were behind the attacks, a defense official said. The Israeli military said 34 rockets were launched from Lebanon on Thursday, of which 25 were intercepted by its Iron Dome anti-missile system.
In response to the volley of rockets fired from Lebanon, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to hit back hard, saying "As for the aggression aimed at us from other fronts - we will hit our enemies and they will pay a price for every act of aggression." Hours after his threat, powerful Israeli airstrikes rocked Gaza strip after midnight on Friday.
Iran has considerable drone capabilities that it has used against US bases in Syria as recently as last month, killing a US contractor and injuring at least eight US servicemen.
Tensions rose in Syria when on March 23 Iranian backed forces attacked a US base with a drone, inflicting casualties. The US responded with an air strike, which was followed by more attacks on US forces. The tit-for-tat strikes stopped after two days, but Iran has targeted US forces in Iraq and Syria 80 times since early 2021 when the Biden administration assumed office.
Israel has been regularly attacking targets in Syria since 2017 to weaken Iran's attempts to strengthen its military presence in the war-torn country and build up a threat on Israel's northern borders.