Iran Has Only Begun to Feel the Pain of Trump’s Sanctions: Benny Avni, New York Post, Aug. 6, 2018 — As the Iranian regime reels under the strain of renewed sanctions, the Trump administration is already preparing the next phase.
What Trump Could Do For Iran: Amir Taheri, Aawsat, Aug. 3, 2018 — “To resist or not to resist?” In Tehran’s political circles these days that is the question.
The Preeminent Challenge: Reuel Marc Gerecht and Ray Takeyh, Weekly Standard, Aug. 3, 2018 — The biggest foreign-policy challenge before Donald Trump isn’t North Korea, where the usual pattern of diplomacy and deception persists.
Why Iran Supports Palestinian Terror Groups: Khaled Abu Toameh, Gatestone Institute, July 19, 2018— While the United Nations, Israel and the US are proposing plans to alleviate the suffering of the Palestinians in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, Iran is pledging to continue its financial and military aid to Palestinian terror groups.
On Topic Links
Netanyahu Warns Iran Against Blocking Maritime Oil Route: Hana Levi Julian, Jewish Press, Aug. 2, 2018
Talking to Rouhani: Is Trump Shooting from the Hip or Reading from a Script?: Dr. James M. Dorsey, BESA, Aug. 5, 2018
With U.S. Sanctions Looming, Iran Faces a Potentially Explosive Economic Crisis: Mohsen Milani, World Politics Review, Aug. 2, 2018
The Iranian Crown Prince’s Speech: Dr. Mordechai Kedar, Breaking Israel News, July 30, 2018
IRAN HAS ONLY BEGUN TO FEEL THE PAIN OF TRUMP’S SANCTIONS
Benny Avni
New York Post, Aug. 6, 2018
As the Iranian regime reels under the strain of renewed sanctions, the Trump administration is already preparing the next phase. We see too little of it in our press, but Iranians are increasingly taking to the streets and the clerics’ hold on power is weakening. And it’s about to get worse for the regime. A new round of US sanctions, announced in advance, kicked in Monday. It restricts currency transfers and bans trade in gold, silver, aluminum, steel and other metals.
Most of the new sanctions have already been factored in, changing the way the world does business in Iran. European politicians, who’ve sanctified President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal, are calling on companies to stay put and do business in Iran, as the seven-party Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action dictates. But business is business.
After the nuke deal was signed, France’s Renault was eager to position itself for the day all sanctions would be removed, cutting deals to dominate Iran’s car market. Anticipating Monday’s sanctions, however, Renault announced an end to all its Iran businesses in July — even though it sells no cars in America.
Meanwhile, under US pressure, Germany’s central bank last week announced new limits on foreign access to cash, blocking a desperate attempt by cash-strapped Tehran to withdraw 300 million euros ($375 million) from a Hamburg-based Iranian-controlled bank.
European politicians, still bitter over the Trump administration’s decision to pull out of the Iran deal and reimpose sanctions, like to issue defiant press releases. But the American squeeze is working. “We know Iran is increasing activities throughout Europe, and so we must be vigilant,” US Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell told me Monday.
Buckle up. The next sanctions phase, due in November, will hit Iran’s only viable source of income: oil. Iran’s oil exports are expected to be halved. Saudis, Russians and Americans will seek to fill the void, making sure Iran, not global consumers, feels the pain. So you’d think (and the regime had hoped) Iranians would blame America. Instead, striking truck and taxi drivers, workers in faraway dusty towns, environmentalists, women, bazaar salesmen — all blame the regime.
With good reason. Obama’s generous JCPOA-related gifts to the regime, more than $100 billion in cash, never trickled down to the people. The money was spent on regional wars, propping up global terror organizations and lining the pockets of regime bigwigs. The Iranian people no longer buy the “Great Satan” trope. “Even the bazaaris [who strongly supported the regime] know that impediment to normal life is not international, but domestic,” says Behnam Ben Taleblu, an Iran watcher at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. And as protests swell, “many of the enforcers, those who joined the Basij and Revolutionary Guards because it was their only employment option, may also defect and join the uprising,” says the Israeli Farsi broadcaster Menashe Amir. “After all, they’re Iranian too.”
The Western press largely ignores or belittles such tectonic shifts, but the Trump administration doesn’t. Last month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met Iranian-Americans in California, expressing support for the protesters. In a Sunday tweet, he backed “the Iranian people’s right to protest against the regime’s corruption & oppression without fear of reprisal.”
Trump’s strategy — turning to the Iranian people — is a major departure from Obama’s coddling of the clerics. Without declaring it outright, Washington has been encouraging regime change, or at least trying to force an end to the regime’s pursuit of nukes, missiles and Mideast aggression.
Sure, regime change could be chaotic, lengthy and bloody. It could lead to an even more repressive, dictatorial and cruel leadership than the current one. Then again, it may liberate the Iranian people and, more likely, end Tehran’s pursuit of the most dangerous arms and the spread of global violence and terrorism.
“Yes, it’s hard to get worse than the Islamic Republic, but the Mideast is full of surprises,” cautions Ben Taleblu. Yet, he adds, a new regime, “popular and representative, will benefit the Iranian people, the Mideast and the international community.” The potential risks are dwarfed by ample rewards, so by all means, tighten the screws. On to the next Iran sanctions phase.
WHAT TRUMP COULD DO FOR IRAN
Amir Taheri
Aawsat, Aug. 3, 2018
“To resist or not to resist?” In Tehran’s political circles these days that is the question. The prospect of fresh sanctions to be imposed by the United States and its allies has helped intensify the debate which has marked Iranian politics since the mullahs seized power in 1979.
At first glance the most common answer seems to be in favor of “resisting”, whatever form it might take. Over the past four decades the Khomeinist ruling elite has been divided between those called “the accommodationists” who have been prepared to seek a deal with the United States and those who refuse even talking to the “Great Satan”. The mullahs’ first Cabinet, headed by Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan, included five US citizens of Iranian origin and was thus dominated by the “accommodationists”. It contemplated a strategy of partnership with the United States to face the Soviet threat in the context of the Cold War. That strategy ever got off the ground as Bazargan and his pro-US group were swept away in the political tsunami triggered by the seizure of the US Embassy in Tehran. Then began almost a decade of war and tension in which the pure revolutionists ran the show and marginalized the accommodationists. The sinking by the US navy of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard navy, followed by Khomeini’s abject retreat and subsequent death, closed that parenthesis as the “resistance” policy proved to be futile.
Then followed almost a decade of domination by the accommodationists who went to the extremes to befriend the ”Great Satan” on the sly. However, a decade of secret and later overt “dialogue” with the Great Satan proved equally fruitless, leading to a “resistance backlash” symbolized by the emergence of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as President. As we know, that attempt at “resistance” also failed, doing possibly long-term damage to Iran’s economy and the nation’s social fabric.
The disastrous end of Ahmadinejad’s presidency gave the accommodationists a fresh chance to try their old and several times failed stratagems. The joint effort by US President Barack Obama and his Islamic counterpart Hassan Rouhani to dupe their respective audiences with the so-called “nuke deal” was hailed by many as an end of the vicious circle of accommodation-resistance. Now, however, we know that that chapter, too, has closed. Even the Islamic Foreign Minister Muhammad-Javad Zarif now admits that much. In a talk in Tehran last Sunday he claimed that even Obama, a “polite and friendly man”, had not been quite straight with his Khomeinist partners in duping the world.
Today, the Islamic Republic looks like a two-trick pony both of whose tricks have been exposed as sham and inefficient. It is, of course, not in the gift of a journalist to predict the future. But it seems to me that the Khomeinist regime will no longer be able to rely on either of its two tricks in the context of the usual cheat-and-retreat strategy to get itself off the hook at least for a while longer.
The reason for that failure is the regime’s inability to clearly spell out its case and tell the Iranians, and the world beyond them, why it is addicted to policies that have produced nothing but grief for all concerned.
It would be a good thing if the “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei were to appear on national television and tell Iranians precisely why it is in Iran’s interest to help Bashar al-Assad kill Syrians or what could be gained for prolonging the war in Yemen by supporting a rebel group that, regardless of the justice or injustice of their cause, have no chance of winning and, even if they won, would in no way contribute to Iran’s security and prosperity.
Until recently, one argument advanced by Khomeinists was that though the current policies, including a real or feigned enmity for the United States, may harm Iran’s interests as a nation they still serve the interests of ran as a vehicle for “Islamic Revolution.” In other words, sacrificing Iran’s national interests to the interests of the dominant ideology may have some rational explanation.
However, even that argument no longer holds. Thousands of deaths and billions spent in Syria have not only harmed Iran’s national interest but have also failed to secure any advancement for the Khomeinist ideology.
Having found a new and stronger protector in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Assad and his cohorts now regard the Islamic Republic as something of an embarrassment. It is no surprise that Assad has vetoed an Iranian plan to set up “cultural centers” in the so-called “newly liberated” areas of Syria, that is to say chunks of territory abandoned by the regime’s opponents. Iranian mullahs and their military associates are no longer flowing into Syria at will and when they arrive there, they are no longer treated with the deference they enjoyed five years ago.
Even in chunks of Yemen held by the Houthis, Iran is being pushed to the sidelines. In fact, the bulk of Iranian diplomatic and military personnel fanning the war in Yemen are now located in neighboring Oman.
Even in Lebanon, as a prominent pro-Tehran Lebanese newspaper editor noted recently, the Islamic Republic risks losing its influence because of the increasing difficulties it faces in paying its allies and mercenaries. The daily Kayhan, believed to reflect Khamenei’s views, still boasts about the Islamic Republic’s success in having Gen. Michel Aoun elected President of Lebanon. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that, while trying not to ruffle the mullahs’ feathers, Aoun is so full of himself as not to be a mere puppet for Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
The looming crisis in Iran may be an opportunity for Iranians, both in the regime and those opposed to it, to decide whether they wish Iran to behave like a vehicle for a bankrupt ideology or like a nation-state with the legitimate, quantifiable and rationally analyzable interests of a nation-state…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
THE PREEMINENT CHALLENGE
Reuel Marc Gerecht and Ray Takeyh
Weekly Standard, Aug. 3, 2018
The biggest foreign-policy challenge before Donald Trump isn’t North Korea, where the usual pattern of diplomacy and deception persists. Nor is it Russia; it doesn’t have the muscle to take on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which isn’t dead yet. Nor is the most imminent problem China, which doesn’t have the navy and air force to tempt fate in the South and East China Seas. It will one day really challenge the United States and East Asia’s democratic and anti-Chinese authoritarian states—the type of fascist confrontation that could lead to carnage—but Washington probably has years to check Beijing’s ambitions.
The most troublesome, immediate challenge comes from Iran. Trump’s decision to walk away from his predecessor’s deeply flawed arms-control agreement will likely soon consume the administration’s attention since, depending on what the mullahs do, war may once more be on the horizon. If the president fails to corral the clerics and the Revolutionary Guards through sanctions and the threat of force, the reverberations will surely weaken, if not gut, the administration’s capacity to play hardball elsewhere. Barack Obama punted the Iranian nuclear problem down the road slightly (and didn’t really pivot to Asia). Trump has probably eliminated the possibility of punting. He now may have to deal with Iran more decisively than his predecessors.
So far, the administration has developed a somewhat contradictory yet potentially successful Iran policy. The White House has all the elements of a regime-change strategy despite its denials; yet Donald Trump aspires to new nuclear negotiations, even suggesting a meeting could take place with Iranian president Hassan Rouhani without prerequisites. Some have called this Reaganesque. After all, Ronald Reagan sought the end of the Soviet empire. “While we must be cautious about forcing the pace of change [inside the Soviet bloc], we must not hesitate to declare our ultimate objectives and to take concrete actions to move toward them,” he declared at Westminster in 1982. “It is time that we committed ourselves as a nation—in both the public and private sectors—to assisting democratic development.” Putting “Marxism-Leninism on the ash-heap of history” clearly meant regime change in Mother Russia. Yet Reagan welcomed nuclear talks with an array of Soviet leaders, from Leonid Brezhnev to Mikhail Gorbachev.
Can Donald Trump tailor-make an approach to an Iran that is suffering from many of the same kind of authoritarian afflictions that the Soviet Union did in the 1980s? Can he, his senior staff, and the essential worker bees understand enough Iranian history—its peoples’ long quest for representative government—to realize that what Reagan envisioned for the Soviet empire is applicable to the Islamic Republic? Reagan’s vision—“The objective I propose is quite simple to state: to foster the infrastructure of democracy, the system of a free press, unions, political parties, universities, which allows a people to choose their own way to develop their own culture, to reconcile their own differences through peaceful means”—is within reach in Persia if the clerical regime starts cracking. Iran is an empire that has, at least at its core, become a coherent nation-state. It carries many of the Middle East’s cultural liabilities, but it manifestly isn’t a land of tribes and oil wells. That it had the Muslim world’s only Islamic revolution 39 years ago is actually an enormous asset in its continuing religious and political evolution. Unlike most Muslims, Iranian Shiites and Sunnis know what it’s like to live in a theocracy. Most have found it wanting.
Post-Iraq, post-Afghanistan, the primary American question is whether Washington’s political elite is capable of imagining interventionism. A successful regime-change approach isn’t likely if one doesn’t really believe, as Reagan did, that American aid to those seeking freedom is both good and strategic. The loss of faith in this idea within the United States is profound and dovetails with an analysis that depicts the Middle East as no longer a compelling strategic theater (killer drones and American military bases in Bahrain and Qatar can handle the post-9/11 threat and the oil of the Persian Gulf). Even the Iranian nuclear quest doesn’t disturb this mindset. The Iraq syndrome has convinced the foreign-policy establishment and a not inconsiderable segment of the American public that the Muslim Middle East is a hopeless mess.
Can Trump carve out a democratic exception for Iran, where religious dictatorship appears to be secularizing the society it rules? Trump seems to have a serious animus against the Islamic Republic—he isn’t in the revisionist right-wing and libertarian camps (see Tucker Carlson, Patrick Buchanan, the American Conservative, and the Cato Institute) that veer toward Obama in their reassessment of, or disinterest in, the mullahs’ ambitions. Can Trump energetically try to collapse the clerical regime and advance democracy there while forging a détente with the repressive Sunni states? Such a contradiction isn’t difficult to handle operationally. The issue is whether the White House can overcome those within the bureaucracies who resist anything too forward-leaning. It’s a good bet that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman and Emirati ruler Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan, who don’t want to see democracy bloom in their kingdoms, would be fine with American efforts to foster representative government in Persia…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
WHY IRAN SUPPORTS PALESTINIAN TERROR GROUPS
Khaled Abu Toameh
Gatestone Institute, July 19, 2018
While the United Nations, Israel and the US are proposing plans to alleviate the suffering of the Palestinians in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, Iran is pledging to continue its financial and military aid to Palestinian terror groups. Iran’s meddling in the internal affairs of the Palestinians is not new. The Iranians have long been providing Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror groups with money and weapons. Were it not for Iran’s support, the two groups, which do not recognize Israel’s right to exist, would not have been able to remain in power in the coastal enclave.
Iran’s support for the Palestinian terror groups has a twofold goal: first, to undermine the Palestinian Authority, which is headed by Mahmoud Abbas, and which Tehran sees as a pawn in the hands of the US and Israel; and second, to advance Iran’s goal of destroying Israel. Just this week, we received yet another reminder of Iran’s true goal. The leader of Iran’s “Islamic Revolution,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said that the Palestinians will win over their enemies and will “see the day when the fake Zionist regime” vanishes. He said that US President Donald Trump’s “evil policy” is doomed to failure.
So, Iran does not care about the harsh conditions of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Instead, its leaders are hoping that the Palestinians will live to see the day Israel is eliminated. This is also why Iran continues to support any Palestinian group that seeks to destroy Israel. On the same day that Khamenei made his statement in Tehran, one of his senior generals, Gholamhossein Gheybparvar addressed a conference held in the Gaza Strip and Tehran simultaneously. Gheybparavar is a senior officer in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and commander of its Basij forces — the “Mobilization Resistance Force.” This force’s main mission is to suppress protests against the regime in Tehran.
In his speech via video conference, the Iranian general told representatives of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other terror groups that he was “proud” of their “resistance” against Israel. He said that the conference, which was being held under the title, “Wet Gunpowder/Resistance Is Not Terrorism,” was an expression of Arab and Islamic unity against the enemies of the Arabs and Muslims. The Iranian general said that Iran and the “axis of resistance” were not afraid of Trump’s “threats.” The Palestinian terror groups said after the conference that they were encouraged by the Iranian general’s pledge to support them in their fight against Israel and the US.
Khader Habib, a senior Palestinian Islamic Jihad official in the Gaza Strip, said that the Iranian-Palestinian conference was both “symbolic and significant.” The conference, he said, served as a reminder that Iran continues to support the Palestinian “resistance” and would deter Israel from attacking the Gaza Strip in response to terror attacks on its citizens. The speech by the Iranian general, he added, was aimed at sending a message to the many countries to support the Palestinian “resistance” groups in the Gaza Strip. “Israel is a potential threat to the Arabs and Muslims,” Habib said. Buoyed by the Iranian backing, several speakers at the conference called for the formation of a “unified Arab-Islamic front” against Israel and the US. They also stressed that the terror attacks against Israel would continue and praised Iran for its full support for the Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip.
By promising to continue helping the Palestinian terror groups, Iran is offering the two million residents of the Gaza Strip more bloodshed and violence. The Iranian general did not offer to build the Palestinians a hospital or a school. Nor did he offer to provide financial aid to create projects that would give jobs to unemployed Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. His message to the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip: Iran will give you as much money and weapons as you need, as long as you are committed to the jihad (holy war) against Israel and the “big Satan,” the US…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
On Topic Links
Netanyahu Warns Iran Against Blocking Maritime Oil Route: Hana Levi Julian, Jewish Press, Aug. 2, 2018—Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Iran on Wednesday that any attempt to shut down a strategic maritime oil route would be met with an international coalition that would open the waterway to traffic.
Talking to Rouhani: Is Trump Shooting from the Hip or Reading from a Script?: Dr. James M. Dorsey, BESA, Aug. 5, 2018—President Donald Trump’s announcement that he is willing to meet unconditionally with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani took many by surprise. It threatened to reinforce the impression, even among America’s closest friends in the Middle East, that Trump is a supportive but unpredictable and unreliable ally.
With U.S. Sanctions Looming, Iran Faces a Potentially Explosive Economic Crisis: Mohsen Milani, World Politics Review, Aug. 2, 2018—A few years after Iran’s 1979 revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini disregarded an aide who was worried about inflation by declaring that “this revolution was not about the price of watermelons.”
The Iranian Crown Prince’s Speech: Dr. Mordechai Kedar, Breaking Israel News, July 30, 2018—The Shah of Iran, Mahmad Reza Pahlevi, was deposed in 1979 and exiled to Egypt with his family where he died one year later. Upon reaching the age of twenty, the late Shah’s son Reza Pahlevi II was crowned in his stead by those loyal to the monarchy, but the fact that the young prince was in exile robbed the move of any practical significance.
