A funeral for a man who was killing during an anti-government protest in Baghdad in November. More than 500 protesters have been killed and 19,000 wounded since the start of the demonstrations.Credit…Thaier Al-Sudani/Reuters

BAGHDAD — For 12 weeks, Iraqi protesters have massed in the streets of Baghdad and cities in southern Iraq to demand the ouster of the government, an end to corruption and a halt to the overweening influence of Iran.

And for 12 weeks, the government has foundered in its response, alternating vague promises of reform with brutal treatment of protesters by its security forces. More than 500 protesters have been killed and 19,000 wounded, according to the United Nations special envoy to Iraq, but the violent response has only deepened protesters’ resolve.

The prime minister, Adel Abdul Mahdi, has resigned but has remained in a caretaker role, and Parliament has yet to come up with someone to replace him.

The political crisis that now confronts Iraq is as serious as any since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein 16 years ago, and its leaders appear ill-equipped to reckon with it. No consensus has emerged for a plan to reform the government to meet the protesters’ demands.

Parliament has not seriously considered even the proposed changes to the election law put forward by President Barham Salih, which would reduce the influence of parties and the corruption they foster.

This week, a constitutional deadline for Parliament to nominate a new prime minister came and went. Even finding an acceptable candidate for prime minister is a tall order.

“It’s very difficult to find someone who is both broadly acceptable to the street, to the protesters, but who also has the party support, the political support to navigate the transition,” said Maria Fantappie, a senior adviser on Iraq and Syria for the International Crisis Group.

Iraqi security forces during a clash in November with anti-government groups in Baghdad.Credit…Ivor Prickett for The New York Times

Even if they did, that would hardly begin to address the protesters’ sweeping demands.

“Our goal is not to have Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi resign,” said Mehdi Chassin, a college student from Amara, in southern Iraq, who came to Baghdad to join the protests. “That makes no difference because another guy will come who will be just the same. We want them all to go.”

But Parliament is unlikely to adopt reforms that would end the careers of everyone in it, and the protesters are unlikely to accept anything less.

“What the parties want is rejected by the Iraqi people and what the Iraqi people want is rejected by the parties,” said Karim al-Nuri, a senior official in the Badr Organization, one of the parties that is close to Iran, but has a diverse membership.

“So there are two alternatives: either to change the Iraqi people or to change some of the political class and make some change in the political process.”

Parliament also seems unprepared to find a way to reduce Iranian influence.

Iranian political and military operatives — including senior figures like Qassim Soleimani, the head of the powerful Quds Force that reports to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — have been in and out of Baghdad trying to ensure that whoever is nominated for prime minister meets Iran’s needs.

So, rather than debate the protesters’ demands directly, members of Parliament talk about how much they are doing — passing legislation to limit salaries of the ministers for instance.

Qais Al-Khazali, the leader of one of the Shiite parliamentary blocs close to Iran, said, “We have enacted legislation, that is our responsibility, now the government’s responsibility is to enforce it.”

When the protests started on Oct. 1, many who came to demonstrate in Baghdad and across southern Iraq were demanding jobs and services such as electricity and clean water.

But after the government opened fire on them, killing more than 100 in the first five days, the number of protesters multiplied and they began to agitate for more far-reaching changes.

Overhauling the entire system of government seems far from politically possible. But the protesters’ focus reflects their frustration with the government’s failure to foster economic opportunity or deal with entrenched corruption. These grievances unite all of those who have come to the street: the young people, the workers, the poor, the educated and the barely literate, the tribal leaders as well as urban street sweepers.

The protesters secured a bridge in Baghdad as part of a sit-in on Dec. 10.Credit…Ali Abdul Hassan/Associated Press

Some members of Parliament acknowledge that they are engaged in a different struggle: the allocation of spoils in the next government. The discussions over choosing a new prime minister, they said, have centered less on the ideals and desires of the Iraqi people than on political power and money.

“There’s a lot of division about who comes next as prime minister, and that’s a problem because the political parties are redividing up the ministries, looking to figure out who gets which ministry share,” said Haithem al-Jubori the head of Parliament’s finance committee.

Iran is particularly concerned that it maintain influence in Iraq’s ministries, especially those dealing with security and economic matters. With America’s tight sanctions against Iran, Tehran increasingly needs Iraq in order to “breathe” economically — both for its markets and for military purposes, to protect its interests in Syria and Lebanon.

The parties that are most powerful and closest to Iran are those that grew out of the armed Shiite groups. It is militia units from ministries controlled by those parties, or agencies of the prime minister, that are blamed by human rights activists for the most violent attacks on the protesters.

In responding to the protests with violence, these forces are taking a page from the Iranian playbook: When Tehran was faced with protests over gas prices in November, it crushed them brutally, killing as many as 450 people in four days and imprisoning 7,000.

Protesters in Najaf set a fire during a protest in front of the Iranian consulate in November.Credit…Reuters

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BAGHDAD — After decades of conflict, Iraq is seeking to reclaim a leadership role and status in the Arab world with a centrist policy and a determination among the country’s top leaders to maintain good relations with both Iran and the United States.

A flurry of recent diplomatic activity and high-profile visits to the Iraqi capital, including this month’s re-opening of a Saudi Consulate in Baghdad — for the first time in nearly 30 years — points to a new era of openness as the nation sheds its war image and re-engages with the world.

“Iraq is coming back to the neighborhood,” President Barham Salih told The Associated Press in a nearly hour-long interview last month. The veteran politician laid out a vision centered on an “Iraq First” policy, saying his country can no longer afford to be caught in regional disputes.

“For almost four decades Iraq was the domain in which everybody pursued their agenda at the expense of the Iraqi people. It’s time we say we need a new political order … in which Iraq must be an important pillar,” Salih said.

Iraq has emerged from a ruinous three-year war against the Islamic State group and faces the mammoth task of reconciling, rebuilding and returning tens of thousands of displaced to their homes. And while the extremists’ territorial “caliphate” has been defeated in Iraq and Syria, the militants have now shifted to an insurgency campaign of targeted assassinations, car bombings, and suicide attacks.

The issue of Iran-backed Shiite militias who fought IS alongside Iraqi security forces poses a challenge to the government’s central authority, and the country’s oil-based economy is suffering from wide-scale corruption.

“Iraq’s path to reclaiming a leadership role in the Arab world will depend on how successful its leaders are in tackling security and economic challenges at home,” Randa Slim, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Middle East Institute wrote recently.

Amid rapidly escalating tensions between the U.S. and Iran, Iraq also needs to maintain a delicate balance with the two as Baghdad has strong ties with both countries.

The dynamics are complex. The Shiite-majority country lies on the fault line between Shiite Iran and the mostly Sunni Arab world, led by powerhouse Saudi Arabia, and has long been a theater in which Saudi-Iran rivalry for regional supremacy played out. Relations have been particularly frosty with Riyadh, which broke relations with Baghdad following Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and never really warmed much as Iraq was increasingly pulled into Iran’s orbit in later years.

Iraq needs much help and investment to rebuild its cities — something it can only get from oil- and gas-rich Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia. But it can also ill afford to alienate Iran, which holds enormous political and military sway in Iraq through powerful militias and pro-Iran politicians.

“We have 1,400 kilometers of borders with Iran, we simply cannot ignore that reality,” Salih said, adding that it’s in Iraq’s national interest to nurture good relations with Iran, with which Iraq fought an eight-year war in the ’80s. He said Iraq, however, was also keen on good relations with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other regional countries.

Mindful of the need to counter Iran’s growing influence in the region in the post-IS order, Saudi officials have sought closer ties with Iraq, and last week sent a high-level delegation to Baghdad where the kingdom’s consulate was inaugurated.

The Saudi delegation’s visit followed a trip to Baghdad last month by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani during which the two sides signed several agreement designed to boost bilateral relations.

It’s a stark contrast from past years when Baghdad was shunned and isolated, first because of international sanctions after Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of neighboring Kuwait, and later, after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled him, when Iraq sank into cycles of sectarian bloodletting.

Amid the violence, international dignitaries avoided visits to the Iraqi capital, and when they did, made them brief and unannounced for security considerations.

In 2007, U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon famously ducked behind the podium during a live press conference with the prime minister at the time, Nouri al-Malki, as a rocket slammed outside the building.

Now, Iraqi leaders say their country is not part of any regional conflict.

Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi in his first foreign trip last month traveled to Cairo to meet with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi. They were joined by Jordanian King Abdullah II for a tripartite summit on measures to strengthen economic cooperation. On Tuesday, Abdul-Mahdi announced he will soon be visiting Saudi Arabia to sign several agreements.

Some are even suggesting that Iraq could play a mediating role between regional foes.

Lebanon’s parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, on a visit to Baghdad earlier this month, said Iraq is a unique position to play an important regional role “in the reconciliation between the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Watheq al-Hashemi, an Iraqi political analyst, said it’s an opportunity for Iraq to again become an important regional player.

But for that to happen, Iraqi politicians “need to put country before sect and act as statesmen,” something he says they’ve had trouble doing for a long time.

Source: https://www.deseretnews.com/article/900065825/after-is-war-iraq-seeks-to-reclaim-status-in-arab-world.html

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Politics has bedevilled Iran’s energy sector ever since the Iranian Revolution of 1978-9, but even as far back as the premiership of Mohammad Mossadegh in the 1950s.

Development of the country’s vast oil, and especially gas, reserves has progressed during periods of détente, but been set back when political tensions heighten. The full re-imposition of US sanctions from 4 ^thNovember 2018 is set to usher in another such period of turmoil.

Iran faces political challenges on four fronts-within different factions of the regime; between the regime and ordinary Iranians; with its Arab neighbours; and with the US and the other leading international powers.

The reputation of the Rouhani administration, mostly a mix of moderates and reformists, has been badly damaged by the US withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the nuclear deal on which it had staked so much political capital. Opposed by hardliners, it had not really drawn economic advantage from the brief period of sanctions’ relaxation, and is now faced with a collapsing currency, worsening unemployment and shortages of imported goods such as medicines.

But American hostility has, as usual, caused something of a closing of the ranks within the ruling regime. Rouhani has been working with prominent pragmatic conservative Ali Larijani, the speaker of parliament, who could be a presidential candidate in 2021. And the eventual departure from the scene of supreme leader Ali Khamenei, now 79, casts a shadow over all political manoeuvrings.

Popular protest

Iran is seeing widespread protests over poor economic conditions and lack of political and human rights. These demonstrations cover many more towns than the 2009 “green movement”, which was focused mainly in Tehran, and apparently attract a wider range of social classes.

But the Islamic Republic is no stranger to phases of mass protest, and, so far, the regime appears under no serious threat. A major uprising would anyway likely be met by deadly force and perhaps a more overt takeover of the government by the leadership of the hard-line Revolutionary Guard.

Neighbourly disputes

Iran’s alleged malign regional activities have been a favourite target of the US, and the subject of much lobbying by Saudi Arabia and its regional allies. Tehran props up the genocidal regime of Bashar Al Assad in Syria and also supports Houthi forces in Yemen in their deadlocked war against Saudi Arabia, the UAE and their Yemeni allies.

And Iran exerts strong, although often overstated, influence in Iraq. Iranian-aligned parties performed strongly in Iraq’s May elections, while still coming in second to Moqtada Al-Sadr’s alliance, which has espoused a more nationalist, populist line. But new prime minister Adel Abdel Mehdi and president Barham Salih are acceptable to both Washington and Tehran, and must do their best to balance both sides’ competing interests. Iraq has so far been awarded a US waiver to continue purchasing Iranian gas and electricity, although the US has sought to divert Iraq’s oil swap with Iran towards Turkey instead.

Oman, which helped mediate the 2015 nuclear deal, Qatar, which shares with Iran the super-giant North Field/South Pars gas reserve, the world’s largest, and, to an extent, Kuwait, have stayed more amicable. To some extent, the Gulf Cooperation Council dispute, which led to an embargo on Qatar by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and others, helped open up Qatar to Iran, although Doha has overall moved closer to Ankara than Tehran.

In August, Iran did improve one set of regional relations by settling some questions of the legal status of the Caspian Sea. Iran had to make concessions, particularly to Russia, but the arrangement has reduced the chance that the Americans or Israelis could look to use Azeri or Kazakh bases in any military action against it. It also modestly boosts the chance of some cross-border oil and gas field developments and pipelines in Caspian waters.

The art of the deal?

Iran’s relationship with the US remains key. After withdrawing from the JCPOA in May, the Trump administration has expressed unremitting hostility to the Iranian regime and sought to ramp up economic pressure. It has so far, though, not departed much from the Obama administration’s policies in the various regional conflicts involving Iran. Given Donald Trump’s liking for headlines and disdain for conventional wisdom, a deus ex machina involving a deal with Tehran, like his meeting with Kim Jong Un of North Korea, cannot be totally ruled out.

But such an accord would be bitterly opposed by hardliners both in Tehran and Washington, and Iran’s hawks in particular believe they have been proved right in their contention that the US cannot be trusted. For now, Iran probably hopes to wait out the Trump administration and hope to deal with a new president after 2020, particularly if the effectiveness of sanctions wanes over time.

The EU joins in with the valid criticism of Iran over its human rights and terrorism record. Relations have not been improved by the revelation of an apparent Iranian plot to kill a Denmark-based opposition leader, in retaliation for a September terrorist attack on a military parade in its Ahvaz oil hub. But the Europeans, wary of yet another conflict on their doorstep, have sought to preserve the economic benefits of the JCPOA and stall an Iranian return to large-scale enrichment.

Their plans to set up a special-purpose vehicle (SPV) for trade will probably not help to maintain large-scale oil trading, but may keep some small and medium businesses engaged, facilitate humanitarian supplies, and perhaps be picked up by Russia and China.

Cosying up to the bear

Given its problems with the US, Tehran’s relations with the other great powers are crucial. It has forged a close partnership with Moscow, despite historic suspicions of its giant northern neighbour. As noted, the two have worked together in Syria. Russia has proffered a grand but vague $50 billion “goods for oil” swap to help Iran avoid sanctions, and it has a strong interest in undermining the efficacy of such American-led measures.

On the other hand, Russia has also cooperated deeply with Saudi Arabia in delivering the “OPEC+” deal on oil production cuts, which Iran joined only reluctantly and now feels cheated by. Russia is glad to see a potential oil and gas-exporting competitor hampered. And Moscow has accepted investment from Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar.

China seeks not to take sides in the Middle East, and is the most important single market for Iranian as well as Saudi crude oil. It is vital for Iran that Beijing continues at least to maintain its level of purchases.

While not wishing to defy the US outright, China is also not in the mood to do it any favours, particularly given the intensifying trade war which has led it to advance tariffs on American oil and gas. China also sees an opportunity to boost oil trade in its own yuan currency, a long-term objective to diminish dependence on the dollar.

Turkey is a regional peer of Iran’s, seeing itself as a leader in the Sunni Muslim world. Its relations with Tehran are complicated, but it continues to buy Iranian oil and gas, and was granted a temporary waiver to continue in November.

Thus, Iran is not as politically isolated as it was under President Obama, but its relations even with some of its closer partners and allies are complicated. It is striking that Iran, unlike Saudi Arabia and Russia, does not gain much geopolitical leverage from its hydrocarbon resources. But, then again, it needs less distractions, as it has to combine its economic and political clout as best it can to survive discontent within, and sanctions without.

Robin M. Mills is CEO of Qamar Energy

Source: http://www.petroleum-economist.com/articles/politics-economics/middle-east/2018/iran-sanctions-cycle-set-to-repeat

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