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Here’s what coronavirus-hit Iran might do to wreak havoc in the region

Ron Kampeas — Tue, 31 Mar 2020 04:11:05 +0000

The confluence of hard-hitting sanctions on the country and Iran’s floundering theocracy frustrated an adequate response to the pandemic.

Iranian people wear protective masks to prevent contracting a coronavirus, in Tehran, Iran February 29, 2020 (photo credit: REUTERS)

Iran by its own accounting is the fifth-ranked among nations in coronavirus fatalities. Outside experts say the rate is likely much higher.

The confluence of hard-hitting sanctions on the country and Iran’s floundering theocracy frustrated an adequate response to the pandemic, according to most accounts, but the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, knows who to blame: Genies. And Americans.

Khamenei’s March 22 speech marking Nowruz, the Persian New Year, has spooked regime watchers inside and outside the country. He blamed the pandemic on the demons identified in the Quran as “Jinn,” known as genies in Western lore, and the American intelligence services working in tandem.

“We have jinn and human enemies that help each other,” he said, according to a translation by Maryam Sinaiee, a British-Iranian political analyst writing for Radio Farda, the U.S. government’s Persian language news service. “The intelligence services of many countries work together against us.”

Among these, he said, was the “most evil enemy of the Islamic Republic” — the United States.

It’s an alarming prospect: If Khamenei truly believes that the CIA is working hand in hand with demons to engage in biowarfare against Iran, he may see fit to respond in kind. And any response would likely bring in Israel, the closest American ally in the region.

It’s a manifestation of what Ali Vaez, the Iran Project director for the International Crisis Group, called “crisis therapy.” Iran historically, faced with internal upheaval, creates an external crisis as a distraction.

“The reality is that a regime under siege from all sides and that has no exit ramp might calculate that it has little to lose and a confrontation with the U.S. would be a good distraction,” Vaez told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Blaming other countries is not unique among leaders worldwide: Chinese media and officials also have insinuated that the virus is a means of U.S. warfare. President Donald Trump frequently faults how China and Europe have handled the virus when he is under fire for how he has dealt with COVID-19.

The stakes are higher with Iran, given how besieged the regime is — a number of its leaders have contracted the virus and at least one has died — and the theocracy’s history of acting on the religious dictates of its leaders.

“The Iranians as a result of the combined impact of sanctions and the coronavirus are under tremendous economic duress,” Vaez said. “If they had any cushion that could keep them afloat until the U.S. elections,” when Trump’s potential departure might ease sanctions pressure, “that has evaporated.”

Patrick Clawson, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy whose expertise is Iran, said the language was alarming enough that for a number of days, government sites posting the speech omitted the passage about jinn — suggesting that even officials close to the 80-year-old Khamenei felt it was prudent to obscure the comments.

“Senior people in the IRGC,” the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, “were saying ‘this guy is our leader, is the old man losing it?’” Clawson said in an interview.

There was good reason to be spooked, Clawson said. The Nowruz speech is the equivalent of the State of the Union.

“This is the biggest speech of the year, this tells you what Iran is going to do for the next year,” he said.

Here are some takes on how Iran’s coronavirus-induced aggression might manifest, how it might not and what can be done to mitigate it.

Scenario 1: An Iranian response is happening now

Militias in Iraq aligned with Iran have attacked U.S. targets in the country in recent weeks, including a rocket attack that killed two American soldiers. U.S. officials are blaming Iran for the attacks.

“We’ve made clear that the Iraqi Shia militias are funded, trained and equipped by the Iranians,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said earlier this month. “We’ve urged the Iranians not to do that.”

An assistant secretary of state, David Schenker, tied the attacks to the coronavirus.

“This is in fact not only an effort to have an impact on domestic politics in Iraq, but also to divert attention from the coronavirus both in Iraq and in Iran, where it’s being dramatically mishandled,” Schenker told reporters at a recent briefing.

Clawson has his doubts. The militias, he said, have minds of their own and are less likely to take orders from Iran since the United States assassinated a top IRGC general, Qassem Soleimani, earlier this year.

“Iranians have after Soleimani’s death lost control of those militias,” Clawson said. The militias “are in the teenage stage, they do what they want.”

The regional chaos that predated the virus also mitigates against immediate action. Iran’s proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah, for instance, is dealing with protests that aim in part to remove the militia from power.

Scenario 2: It happens later

Iran has played a long game historically when it retaliates for perceived aggression.

“I read the speech as implying that Iran should consider retaliating in kind with bioweapons,” Clawson said. “It would be months down the road, not days.”

The Nuclear Threat Initiative, a weapons of mass destruction watchdog, says there have not been definitive assessments recently that Iran has biological weapons, but it likely has the capability. Getting to actual weapons, and selecting an appropriate arena to make it clear that Iran is ready to use them, would take time.

Scenario 3: The U.S. continues to squeeze Iran

The Trump administration has not relented in pressuring Iran with sanctions, imposing new ones this week on 20 companies and officials that it says are implicated in attacks on U.S. targets in Iraq. The aim of what the Trump administration calls a “maximum pressure” policy is to get Iran to stand down from its adventurism, although it has yet to show substantial results.

Now is not the time to relieve those sanctions, according to hawkish critics of the regime, who note that Iran has rejected humanitarian assistance that is allowed under the sanctions. Iran has even expelled a mission by Doctors Without Borders, a group that was positioned to alleviate the impact of the virus, baselessly accusing the group of espionage.

“The Iranian government had the power to curtail the virus, but instead they ignored the situation, lied to their people and exacerbated the situation to weaken the resolve of the international community to robustly implement sanctions,” David Ibsen, the president of United Against a Nuclear Iran, wrote in EuroNews. “Sanctions are not the villain in this regretful story.”

Scenario 4: The pandemic eases relations

Vaez and his Crisis Group colleague, Robert Malley, wrote recently in Foreign Policy that the coronavirus crisis could create an opportunity to deflate tensions between the United States and Iran.

“Both Washington and Tehran have floated ideas” related to the pandemic “that, if acted upon, could break the current vicious cycle,” they wrote.

They cite Washington’s demand that Iran release foreign prisoners susceptible to the spread of the virus, and Iran’s bid for an International Monetary Fund loan to buy equipment to tackle the virus.

Were Iran to release the prisoners, and the United States to refrain from blocking the IMF loan, that could set in motion a dynamic that could lead to more expansive backdowns affecting sanctions and Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons program, Vaez and Malley say.

Vaez in the JTA interview said he was not optimistic the sides would take that path.

“The reality is that this crisis is also a diplomatic opportunity, but all the indicators are now in the opposite direction,” he said. ”It seems Iran and the United States are on a collision course rather than using this crisis as an opportunity to reduce tensions.”

Mark Dubowitz, the CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank, said Iran’s trajectory has been for decades to accelerate and expand its malign activity outside its borders, and that a crisis was only exacerbating those tendencies.

“They’re becoming more desperate to try to strengthen and stabilize a regime that is in the throes of dissolution that looks to be entering a period of significant risk to its survival,” he said in an interview.

Source: https://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Heres-what-coronavirus-hit-Iran-might-do-to-create-havoc-in-the-region-623004

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Mike Pompeo lays out steep terms for Iran nuclear treaty

Al Jazeera — Mon, 21 May 2018 08:25:16 +0000

Mike Pompeo outlines 12 demands to be included in new treaty with Tehran, including removing all its forces from Syria.

The US secretary of state has outlined a series of steep demands to be included in a new nuclear treaty with Iran, including withdrawing all its forces from Syria, and threatened “the strongest sanctions in history” if Tehran does not comply.

Mike Pompeo’s comments came more than a week after the US withdrew from a multinational pact with Iran, in a move with major implications for the global oil trade and multibillion-dollar business deals.

Speaking at Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC, Pompeo said the US “will apply unprecedented financial pressure on the Iranian regime”.

He added: “The sting of sanctions will be painful if the regime does not change its course from the unacceptable and unproductive path it has chosen to one that rejoins the league of nations.”

Pompeo presented a list of 12 “basic requirements” for a new treaty, including that Iran must stop enrichment of uranium and never pre-process plutonium, as well as allow “unqualified access to all [nuclear] sites throughout the country”.

Pompeo also said Iran would have to end its interventions in regional affairs and conflicts, including in Lebanon and Yemen.

“We will track down Iranian operatives and their Hezbollah proxies operating around the world and crush them,” Pompeo said.

‘Shrug off an angry rhetoric’

His threat of further sanctions came as European parties to the landmark 2015 nuclear deal were working to find a way to keep the pact in effect with Iran, even without US participation.

There was no immediate comment from Iran to Pompeo’s speech, but after Washington’s exit, Tehran had said that “the interests of the people of Iran must be assured” for it to stay in the deal.

Al Jazeera’s Zein Basravi, reporting from Tehran, said that despite Pompeo’s strong rhetoric, the Iranian leadership is “likely to feel like this is nothing they haven’t heard from the United States before”.

“There is such an enormous trust deficit between the US and Iran that Iranian leaders are likely to really shrug this off as yet more angry rhetoric coming from the Trump White House,” he said.

Basravi added that Iran, a country that is party to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, has repeatedly said “the allegations that it is pursuing nuclear weapons is not true”.

Under the deal signed in Vienna with six world powers – China, France, Russia, the UK, the US and Germany, as well as the European Union – Iran scaled back its enrichment of uranium and vowed not to pursue nuclear weapons in exchange for sanctions relief.

United Nations inspectors have repeatedly confirmed Iran’s compliance with the deal.

Still, US President Donald Trump on May 9 announced Washington’s withdrawal from the deal and said that he would impose tough economic sanctions on Iran

Several major European companies expressed concern about continuing business with Iran following the US exit, raising further doubts about the viability of the deal.

In his address, his first major policy speech since starting as top US diplomat late last month, Pompeo also warned European businesses who work with Iran in violation of US sanctions that they will be held “to account.”

Al Jazeera’s Natacha Butler, reporting from France’s capital, Paris, said that Pompeo’s comments about a new treaty are not likely to be received well in Europe.

“You can only imagine how European leaders might react to that,” she said.

“In many ways, it looks as if the US is dictating what should be done when, of course, from the Europeans’ point of view there is a deal already there that most European leaders say has been working and they say that Iran has been complying.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES

Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/05/mike-pompeo-lays-iran-strategy-nuclear-deal-withdrawal-180521130956378.html

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Netanyahu tells Macron to take Trump seriously, fix Iran deal

Michael Wilner - The Jerusalem Post — Sun, 14 Jan 2018 04:54:37 +0000

French President Emmanuel Macron welcomes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Paris. (photo credit: PHILIPPE WOJAZER / REUTERS)

PARIS – A day after President Donald Trump set an ultimatum to fix “disastrous flaws” in a deal curbing Iran’s nuclear program, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told French President Emmanuel Macron in a phone call that “Trump’s remarks should be taken seriously, and whoever wants to keep the nuclear deal would be wise to fix it.”

According to a statement from Netanyahu’s office, he also told Macron the free world should “strongly condemn the five crimes of the Iranian regime,” listing “efforts to obtain nuclear weapons, developing ballistic missiles against UN Security Council resolutions, supporting terror, regional aggression,” and “the cruel repression of Iranian citizens.”

A senior US administration official said that Trump would not sign any more such waivers going forward – starting a 120-day clock for negotiations over what the White House describes as a supplemental accord with Europe that will impose new terms on Iran over its future nuclear work.

Russia – one of the parties to the Iran pact alongside the United States, China, France, Britain, Germany and the European Union – called Trump’s comments “extremely negative.”

While approving the waiver on US sanctions related to the nuclear deal, Washington announced other sanctions against 14 Iranian entities and people, including judiciary head Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani, a close ally of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Iran said on Saturday it would retaliate against new sanctions imposed by the United States Describing sanctions against Larijani as “hostile action,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry said the move “crossed all red lines of conduct in the international community and is a violation of international law and will surely be answered by a serious reaction of the Islamic Republic,” state media reported.

It did not specify what any retaliation might involve.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif had earlier said on Twitter that the deal was “not renegotiable” and that Trump’s move “amounts to desperate attempts to undermine a solid multilateral agreement.”

Trump’s move creates a deadline on talks over a nuclear deal the European Union says is working, and that it will not touch. Should Trump fail to issue future waivers, European entities and businesses will bear the brunt of secondary sanctions, creating a crisis in US-EU relations, in addition to whatever actions Tehran might take in response.

The senior official said that Trump seeks a multilateral deal negotiated without Iran at the table, but with European nations willing to set “triggers” for additional sanctions on Tehran upon the expiration of critical provisions of the 2015 accord.

The president is seeking an agreement that “never expires,” and that “denies Iran all paths to a nuclear weapon forever – not for 10 years or any other shorter period of time,” the senior official said, referring to controversial “sunset” clauses within the nuclear accord.

“I do want to stress also that this would not entail direct negotiations with the Iranians, this would be something the United States works out with our European partners only,” the official added. “It would be an agreement amongst the United States and our European partners to reimpose multilateral sanctions should the Iranians surpass the new triggers that we would lay out.”

Trump had come under heavy pressure from European allies to issue the sanctions waiver.

The US administration also said it hopes for an amendment to congressional legislation that imposes triggers on Iran of its own – and that for the first time characterizes Tehran’s ballistic missile program as “inseparable” from its nuclear work, bringing with it harsh sanctions. The nuclear deal does not address Iran’s ballistic missile program.

The US Treasury Department also announced 14 new sanctions designations on Iran, including against entities in its aviation sector, the Revolutionary Guards Corps cyber units and the head of Iran’s judiciary.

Trump in October chose not to certify the country’s compliance and warned he might ultimately terminate the accord. He accused Iran of “not living up to the spirit” of the agreement even though the International Atomic Energy Agency says Tehran is complying.

In a written statement, Trump said the following: “Today, I am waiving the application of certain nuclear sanctions, but only in order to secure our European allies’ agreement to fix the terrible flaws of the Iran nuclear deal. This is a last chance. In the absence of such an agreement, the United States will not again waive sanctions in order to stay in the Iran nuclear deal. And if at any time I judge that such an agreement is not within reach, I will withdraw from the deal immediately.

“No one should doubt my word. I said I would not certify the nuclear deal – and I did not. I will also follow through on this pledge. I hereby call on key European countries to join with the United States in fixing significant flaws in the deal, countering Iranian aggression, and supporting the Iranian people. If other nations fail to act during this time, I will terminate our deal with Iran. Those who, for whatever reason, choose not to work with us will be siding with the Iranian regime’s nuclear ambitions, and against the people of Iran and the peaceful nations of the world.”

Reuters contributed to this report.

Source: http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Netanyahu-tells-Macron-to-take-Trump-seriously-fix-Iran-deal-534656

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