January 13, 2023
Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian expressed hope during a visit to Lebanon Friday that diplomatic ties between Tehran and Riyadh could be restored through dialogue between the two regional arch-rivals.
Saudi Arabia cut ties with Iran in January 2016, after protesters attacked its embassy in Tehran and consulate in second city Mashhad following Riyadh's execution of Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr.
Amir-Abdollahian told a news conference in Beirut "we are ready to restore ties," and such a move "would have positive repercussions on the entire region."
He also hailed a potential rapprochement between Iranian ally Syria and Turkey, after their defence ministers met last month.
Iran and Saudi Arabia back opposing sides in various conflicts in the region, including in Syria.
Amir-Abdollahian said the first steps should be resuming talks on reopening Iran's consulate in Jeddah and SaudiArabia's consulate in Mashhad for citizens interested in religious travel.
"But as we see it, Saudi Arabia is not completely ready to work on... normalising ties," he told reporters.
Since April 2021, Iraq has hosted a series of meetings between the two sides, but no meetings have been publicly announced since April 2022.
Last July Amir-Abdollahian noted previous rounds of talks had mainly been at the level of security officials and said Iran was ready for talks at a higher-level "political stage."
But after nationwide protests in Iran erupted in September, Tehran accused Riyadh of "unfriendly behaviour" and encouraging the movement.
Iran holds sway over political life in Lebanon and Iraq, where it also supports armed groups.
Amir-Abdollahian met Friday with officials including his counterpart Abdallah Bou Habib and caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati.
He also held talks with Hassan Nasrallah, chief of the powerful pro-Iranian Shiite movement Hezbollah.
They discussed "possible threats arising from the formation of a government of corrupt people and extremists" in Israel, according to a Hezbollah statement.
- 'Positive repercussions' -
Lebanon's southern neighbour in late December inaugurated the most right-wing government in the country's history, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The move has sparked fears of heightened tensions between Israel and Palestinian groups, and of a potential military escalation in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Syria's pro-government Al-Watan newspaper said Amir-Abdollahian was set to visit ally Damascus on Saturday, at a time of warming ties between Syria and Turkey.
"We are happy with this dialogue that is taking place between Syria and Turkey," Amir-Abdollahian said.
"We believe that this dialogue should have positive repercussions benefitting these two countries."
Ankara had long backed rebels opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
But after more than a decade of war that has seen Damascus claw back territory with Russian and Iranian support, ties between Syria and Turkey have begun to thaw.
In late December, Syrian and Turkish defence ministers held landmark negotiations in Moscow -- the first such meeting since 2011.
Assad said on Thursday that a Moscow-brokered rapprochement with Turkey should aim for "the end of occupation" by Ankara of parts of Syria.
The defence ministers' meeting is to be followed by talks between the three countries' top diplomats, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Thursday.
The mooted reconciliation has alarmed Syrian opposition leaders and supporters who reside mostly in parts of the war-torn country under Ankara's indirect control.
Iran's FM says talks with Saudis could restore relations
January 13, 2023
Talks between regional rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia are continuing and could eventually restore diplomatic relations that were severed years ago, Iran’s foreign minister said Friday.
Hossein Amirabdollahian told reporters in Beirut Friday that he met Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud during a conference in Jordan last month that was attended by Middle Eastern and European officials. The meeting between Amirabdollahian and Prince Faisal was the highest-level encounter between the two countries since they cut relations seven years ago.
Sunni powerhouse Saudi Arabia and Iran, which is majority Shiite, have been at odds since Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, but relations worsened after the 2016 execution of Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr by Riyadh. The incident set off protests in both countries. In Tehran, demonstrators set fire to the Saudi Embassy. Diplomatic relations soured after that.
Direct talks were launched in April 2021, brokered by Iraq, in a bid to improve relations. The mere existence of a dialogue was seen as important, even if the only notable result so far has been Iran reopening the country’s representative office to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in the Saudi city of Jeddah.
“There was an agreement in our points of view to continue with the Saudi-Iran dialogue in what would eventually normalize relations between the two countries,” Amirabdollahian said about his meeting with his Saudi counterpart in Jordan in December.
“We welcome the restoration of normal relations between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” Amirabdollahian said. The hope, he added, is that eventually “we reach (an agreement on) reopening diplomatic missions and embassies in Riyadh and Tehran."
Amirabdollahian also praised contacts between Syrian and Turkish officials saying that such talks will have positive effects on the interests of those two countries.
The defense ministers of Turkey and Syria held talks in Moscow in late December, marking the first ministerial level meeting between Damascus and Ankara since relations broke down with the start of the Syrian civil war more than 11 years ago.
Turkey and Syria have been on opposing sides of the Syrian conflict, with Turkey backing rebels trying to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad. Damascus, for its part, has denounced Turkey’s hold over stretches of territory in northern Syria which were seized in a series of military incursions since 2016 to drive away Kurdish militant groups.
In his first comments on the Turkish-Syrian dialogue, Assad said in a statement released by his office Friday following a meeting with Russian presidential envoy in Syria Alexander Lavrentyev, that the Russia-backed talks should aim to “end occupation and the support of terrorism.”
Assad was referring to Turkey’s backing to insurgent groups since the conflict began in March 2011 and has killed hundreds of thousands of people.
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Threats from Iran are expanding beyond Middle East, defense official says
January 13, 2023
While the Department of Defense has outlined China as its "pacing challenge" and Russia as an "acute threat," the threat from Iran is "increasing" as well, according to one DOD official.
Iran's maligned influence "is not staying in the Middle East," Dana Stroul, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, said at a media roundtable earlier this week, designating that line as "the key takeaway" from a broad scope of Tehran's behavior.
Tehran has provided Russia with hundreds of "kamikaze" drones for its war in Ukraine, and Russia has subsequently used them to target Ukraine's energy infrastructure in an attempt to break the will of the Ukrainian people by making residents suffer through brutal winter conditions.
IRAN COULD BE 'CONTRIBUTING' TO WAR CRIMES IN UKRAINE, WHITE HOUSE ALLEGES
"Now I think the key takeaway is what has — we've seen in the Middle East is not staying in the Middle East," Stroul explained. "The Iran-Russia increasing alliance, the proliferation of UAVs to Russia, and the possibility that there's contemplation of the transfer of ballistic missiles to Russia for use in Ukraine is both a call for the entire global community to — to step up, in how we counter the Iran threat, and very specifically to take a firm stance against Russian-Iranian cooperation."
Earlier this week, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Tehran could be "contributing to widespread war crimes" against the Ukrainians.
Stroul described four aspects of the threats from Iran that she described "not only as consistent but increasing." They were the "continuing support, arming, training, equipping, and funding terrorists and proxy groups across the region," their aggression at sea, cyberattacks, and the proliferation of their UAVs not only to regional proxies, but to Russian forces as well.
A day before the round table, U.S. Central Command announced that, days earlier, it "intercepted a stateless dhow in the Gulf of Oman smuggling more than 2,000 AK-47 assault rifles while transiting international waters from Iran to Yemen."
"This shipment is part of a continued pattern of destabilizing activity from Iran. These threats have our attention. We remain vigilant in detecting any maritime activity that threatens freedom or compromises regional security," Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, the commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, the U.S. 5th Fleet, and the Combined Maritime Forces, said.
Gen. Matthew McFarlane, the commander of Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve, said at the roundtable that he's "laser-like-focused on force protection" against Iran and its proxies in the region. "We track threats from multiple vectors across both countries. We remain focused on innovating to stay in front of threats that are — are developing weapons, like advanced conventional weapons, one-way attack UAVs, to ensure we can defeat those and protect the coalition, as we remain focused on our de-ISIS mission.
TEHRAN BLOG: Dizzying descent of rial gives rise to ‘Farzin & Khandoozi’
January 12, 2023
Pity Mohammad Reza Farzin, the latest governor of Iran’s central bank, charged with getting a grip on the ungraspable Iranian rial.
The rial’s just climbed off the floor having in December belly-flopped past 400,000/$ for the first time, landing with its nose in the dirt at an all-time weak rate of 440,000/$. The rial, or IRR, has in fact lost its bearings ever since the start of the Islamic Revolution in 1979 (that’s right, it’s still going on, creeping forward, despite the unrest on Iran’s streets of the past four months aimed at sending it into reverse). Back then, more than 43 years ago, the currency was IRR 78 to the USD. When the nuke deal, or JCPOA, was signed in 2015, it stood at IRR 32,000. Prior to its latest dizzying free market descent, dollars were selling at around IRR 360,000.
Sick as a parrot, the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) was again called on to intervene, or at least talk a good game to fend off annihilation. It’s been busy doing a bit of this and a bit of that in an attempt to curb the ravenous demand for FX amid Iran’s rather obscure prospects, at one point blowing the trumpet to announce a special official dollar rate for travellers who can prove they’re headed abroad.
With inflation officially around 50%, it’s slumping shoulders time for the many Iranians who can’t conceive of a dream trip abroad, but would like to think they can still take a breezy trip to the shops. As for notions of a home buying coup? Forget it! The average Tehran property square metre in December reached IRR 500mn, up six-fold since 2018. Thousands have settled for poorly constructed satellite suburbs with poor amenities. Middle and upper class Iranians, on the other hand, are found selling up and departing the country. Turkey is a favourite destination. Citizenship is available to those who can fork out $400,000 to buy real estate in the country (the Turkish lira of course has also seen its value against the dollar destroyed in the past few years. A punch-up between the rial and the lira would be quite some spectacle).
Anyway, back to new central bank chief Farzin. A former top banker, he’ll need the backing of the clerics if he wants to do owt radical to cheer up the rial. Many observers don’t think the support is there.
Early moves from Farzin have included delaying the release of redenominated bank notes from the 2018 to 2021 stint of CBI governor Abdolnaser Hemmati. Some took it as a possible sign that Farzin is looking to get the CBI back into a reformist alignment with the grouping who fondly remember the 2013 to 2021 double presidency of pragmatist centrist Hassan Rouhani, much to the chagrin of Rouhani’s principlist successor Ebrahim Raisi. The word is that Raisi only reluctantly brought in Farzin. Needs must. The mounting fiasco surrounding Farzin’s predecessor Alireza Salehabadi, who took a nasty beating from the forex markets before he was given the boot, was a clear and present danger.
Like all of his predecessors, Farzin has vowed to take a “tough stance” against currency speculators. Stringent measures on selling FX at street bureaux de change (these include forcing people to show their outbound flight ticket prior to a hard currency purchase and limiting the amount available to $2,000) are, not surprisingly, already in place. Moves to spook traders (such as the arrest of 153 supposedly illicit market movers on Tehran’s Ferdowsi “FX street”), have been made. Many trades have moved behind double-locked doors.
‘The man in Istanbul’
In an interview on state broadcaster IRIB TV on January 7, Iran’s Economy Minister Ehsan Khandoozi was caught off guard by the news interviewer as he took a trip down blame street, saying Iran’s forex sector was under the control of outside actors. In a now celebrated moment, Khandoozi, accused an individual in Istanbul of manipulating Iran’s exchange rates. 'Those active on the forex market know that a man behind a [Telegram messenger] channel in Istanbul is setting the price of the currencies in Iran,' the minister asserted in his somewhat abrupt revelation.
Eyebrows are raised. Khandoozi, you might think, has overegged the pudding in raising such concerns but he’s not entirely barking up the wrong tree. Unbeknownst to most Iranians inside the country, rial trading occurs at several border markets, including on the frontiers with Turkey, Afghanistan and the UAE. Also in the case of Turkey, online forex traders send minute-by-minute valuations back to Tehran from the safety of Istanbul. It all adds a new dimension to the lack of market control Iranian officials complain they are experiencing.
Khandoozi provided no further details on the man in Istanbul but, menacingly, he observed that the “war” has moved into the economic sphere and that the government had, clad in tin helmet (okay, he said nothing about a tin helmet, or a tin foil hat for that matter), its work cut out in keeping market control.
In the first two weeks of his tenure, Farzin was quick to meet and greet Iran’s Gulf Arab neighbours. There were suggestions that the new CBI head honcho was visiting Qatar and the UAE in an attempt at arranging more control for Iran of its forex market. During his visit to Doha, he may not have been a picture of calm, but he was quick to express his hopes for calm in FX trading. Iranian media speculated that he was going in for a bit of de-dollarising in the spirit of the Kremlin, attempting to get the neighbours to release Iran’s sanctions-locked funds in their own currencies.
Mehdi Taghiani, spokesman of Iran’s parliamentary Economic Commission, was also up for a spot of de-dollarising, telling CBI-affiliated news agency IBENA in the context of Farzin’s visit to Abu Dhabi that in line with Tehran’s growing regional ties, Iran would increasingly move to trade in local currencies rather than the dollar.
Once back in Tehran, Farzin remained pretty tight-lipped about what he’d been up to. But it’s clear officials are attempting to remove the dollar from as many transactions as they can to create a regional buffer. That’s right. A regional buffer is now the name of the game. And the plaque on the door of this enterprise reads “Farzin & Khandoozi”. How long before there’s a branch in Istanbul?
Will the US miss the moment again in Iran?
January 13, 2023
Among the nations that could take advantage of the United States during this unprecedented period of congressional dysfunction is Iran Iranian athletes, chess players, celebrity chefs and members of the general public are caught up in crackdowns by Iran’s theocratic regime. Executions are taking place on a near daily basis.
On the streets Tehran and other cities, protests have grown since mid-September, when thousands of ordinary citizens protested the death of an innocent 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini, whose detention and death became a symbol of the regime’s brutality and the growing desire of women to shed their headscarves.
Now Iran is doubling down on its brutality by imposing a tougher set of rules on hijabs and ordering officials to “act decisively” against women who do not follow them.
The U.S. and Europe must sound the alarm and signal support for these citizens who are risking their lives for change.
Too often over the last few decades, the U.S. has missed the moment on protests in Iran, as we did in 2009 when the Green Movement built steam.
When the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, departed his country for the final time on Jan. 16, 1979, he left behind a nation in perpetual discontent. A country ruled by monarchs for 2,500 years suddenly found itself governed by Shia clerics, beginning with Ayatollah Khomeini, and continuing to the present-day theocracy. And the U.S. has not managed to influence Iran in a positive way despite the Iranian people’s desire to change.
Bubbling beneath the surface of religious rule has been a quiet, steady protest movement that refuses to be extinguished even in the face of imprisonment and death.
What comes next in this country of 85 million could have aftershocks that impact everything from the price of oil to nuclear conflagration to the war in Ukraine.
Nuclear weapons
On the top of the minds of global diplomats is growing evidence that Iran is enriching uranium at its highest level ever, positioning it to become a nuclear bomb-making nation. Any hopes of a joint agreement (the JCPOA) to freeze Iranian enrichment is all but dead as even the United States, one the biggest backers of a nuclear deal, is now bent on imposing costly sanctions on Iran to devastate its already declining economy.
2023 will mark the official expiration of the old nuclear deal as its so-called “sunset clauses” set in. And tensions between Israel and Iran over nuclear nightmares are high following the assassination of a top Iranian official in Tehran, a series of other mysterious deaths of security personnel inside Iran, airstrikes against Iran-linked targets in Syria, threatening rhetoric from Iranian leaders and Iran’s increasing violation of nuclear agreements. Last week Iran launched an explosive-laden drone at a simulated Israeli Naval base.
Terrorism
One of the greatest threats from Iran remains its ability to carry out terrorist attacks around the world. Last weekend, German authorities detained an Iranian suspected of planning a terrorist attack after a tip from the U.S. And the U.S. Navy confirms it seized over 2,100 assault rifles destined for Yemen and believed to have originated in Iran.
Complicating political matters inside Iran has been the fragility of the current supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, whose death could destabilize or even lead to the collapse of the state. Iran says it has closed a Tehran-based French institute over “sacrilegious” cartoons of its supreme leader in a French satirical magazine. If desperate, the religious regime will lash out not only at home but through proxies abroad.
Russian drones
At a time when war between Russia and Ukraine is occupying the lion’s share of attention and resources, Iran is very much on the minds of America and Europe as a key supplier of drones for Moscow’s continuing attack on Ukraine’s infrastructure.
The U.S. is trying to crack down on Iranian drone shipments as Russia keeps pounding away at Ukraine’s electricity grid. Most fear-inspiring is the thought of Russia sending nuclear-related hardware to Iran for its global use.
Frustrating the U.S. government are reports showing that explosive drones and other guided munitions provided from Iran are built mainly with parts from the United States, shipped despite sanctions.
With Iran in the global spotlight, including a United Nations investigation of violations committed against protestors, the West has a window of opportunity to tighten the screws on the Iranian regime with more sanctions, and to galvanize the Iranian public with open and consistent support for civil society.
The U.S. government should increase assistance to protestors with advanced telecommunications tools and help ordinary Iranians get continued access to virtual private networks (VPNs) to allow protestors to avoid internet detection and security crackdowns. Ironically, that means lessening sanctions on private firms in certain sectors. Additional sanctions on Iran’s aviation and defense sector have been levied by the U.S. government in recent days, but more pressure is needed.
We have a historic chance to help Iran redefine itself and move away from religious restrictions, morality police and domestic surveillance of innocent citizens while safeguarding the world from a nuclear Iran eager to do damage at home and abroad. It is paramount that Congress acts with one voice.
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