As the March 7 Iraqi parliamentary elections draw near, American media have focused on renewed allegations of Iranian meddling. Over the past week General Odierno and U.S. ambassador to Baghdad Chris Hill presented a united front in accusing Iraqi officials Ahmed Chalabi and Ali Faisal al-Lami of being improperly influenced by Iran in their decision to disqualify some 300 Iraqi politicians for allegedly being too close to Saddam Hussein’s Bath Party. (Reidar Visser has been exhaustively covering this saga on his blog).
But how is the story playing in Iran? For one take, I made a quick scan of the past week’s Iraq coverage in Hossein Shariatmadari’s Kayhan , a stalwart pro-regime daily. Rather than admitting (or even celebrating) Iranian influence in Iraq as one might suspect from Kayhan’s usual ultra-nationalist coverage, Kayhan’s editors seem most interested in exposing nefarious influences from Washington and other Arab states.
One article played-up a quote from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki condemning the millions of dollars in bribe money that Arab states (*Riyadh*, coughs the author a few paragraphs later) have allegedly funneled into the country to support Sunni candidates. Another piece took this narrative one step further, casting ISCI leader Ammar al-Hakim as the protector of Iraqi sovereignty in the face of American occupation and sectarian Saudi meddling.
Kayhan never confronts the de-Baathification controversy head on, but works its agenda obliquely, reporting protests in five Iraqi cities against the “return of Baathists.” Its coverage looks to take the spotlight off Iranian influence in Iraq, shining it instead on the American occupiers and neighboring Arab states. Both Prime Minister Maliki and Ammar al-Hakim are quoted favorably, cast as leaders concerned with protecting Iraqi sovereignty from foreign designs — not at all surprising given they are both Shia politicians that enjoy warm relations with Tehran.
As Iraq’s elections season heats up, the Iranian position is more and more resembling a mirror opposite of the American one: both states seek to position themselves as advocates of Iraqi sovereignty while casting the other as the meddling outsider (In recent statements Christopher Hill was careful to nuance his take on Iranian influence, but the overall U.S. messaging against Iranian meddling has not been so subtle). Iran seems to have won the first round with the successful barring of alleged Baathist candidates, but we’ll have to wait a few more weeks to see if the pro-Iranian parties dominate at the polls.
With Obama committed to the U.S. troop drawdown, this will likely prove the most consequential Iraqi election (and post-election politicking) to date. As this plays out, we hope to continue bringing you perspectives from Iranian media and elsewhere around the Gulf.
PS. We’ve created a Twitter list of some of the key tweeters on Iran-GCC relations. You can follow it here.
In the wake of Hillary Clinton’s trip to the Gulf, the United States is making a renewed push to line up actors that would be key to enforcing any new sanctions against Iran. The FT reported yesterday that Lloyds, which runs an influential insurance market for 8-10% of the world’s shipping, would halt coverage for refined petroleum shipments bound for Iranian ports:
“If the legislation is passed and sanctions are put in place by the US, we would comply and ensure underwriters in Lloyd’s were compliant, although we would not want the compliance burden to be disproportionate,” said Sean McGovern, general counsel for Lloyd’s.
Lloyd’s is telling underwriters they would be wise to review their contracts to look for ships heading to Iran. Mr McGovern said it was possible that underwriters would be compelled to ensure that a ship they had covered would not be going to Iran.
This could take the form of inserting exclusion clauses in contracts, specifying that ships would not be covered if they carried goods to Iran. Such changes would be likely, at the least, to make insurance for ships serving Iranian ports harder to obtain and more expensive. They could also reduce the supply of refined oil for Tehran.
Meanwhile, Abdulrahim Al Awadi, an official at the UAE’s central bank has said that it “will implement any UN resolutions without reservations on any countries, including Iran.” The article went on to link the issue of Emirati sanctions enforcement to the question of the UAE being placed on an international money laundering blacklist:
When asked whether the U.A.E. is worried about IRGC money being funneled through U.A.E. banks, Al Awadi refused to answer the question, but stressed on the U.A.E.’s compliance with FATF standards.
A new FATF list of countries that are considered to be lax in combatting terrorism financing and money laundering will be released after the conference, which ends Feb. 19, Al Awadi said. The list is called the International Cooperation Review Group, or ICRG.
Al Awadi added the U.A.E. is confident that it will not be placed on the list.
“Our (anti-money laundering and financial terrorism) laws are strong and there are no loop holes,” he said.
The key distinction here is that Lloyds will comply with unilateral U.S. sanctions, while the UAE seems to require multilateral sanctions approved by the UN to act– measures that Russia and China are now working to delay and dilute, according to a new report by ICG, and others. Does Al Awadi’s statement reflect a newfound Emirati resistance to go along with informal U.S. sanctions of the sort arranged by Stuart Levey at the U.S. Treasury? There’s not enough evidence here to tell, but an issue to watch closely as the sanctions game picks up. -WW
Less then a day after Hillary Clinton, speaking in Doha, warned that Iran was descending into military dictatorship and sought to rally Gulf Arab states around greater pressure on Tehran, two Iranian warships have docked at a Qatari port, according to Press TV. The Iranian navy’s visit to Qatar is part of deepening military ties between the two states, and comes just two weeks after the U.S. announced it would be deploying several new Patriot missile batteries to GCC states, including Qatar, to protect against Iranian missiles.
David Roberts at The Gulf Blog has been tracking other recent Iran-Qatar deals that include cooperation on energy, tourism and defense, that were signed on Qatari Crown Prince Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani’s first visit to Tehran earlier in February.
The warship episode is further evidence of Qatar’s savvy foreign policy of pursuing warm bilateral relations with the powers that be in the Gulf. These ties could position Doha to act as a much-needed interlocutor and translator between Washington and Tehran. -WW (Hat Tip Uskowi on Iran)
In what seems like a calculated follow-on from Obama’s warnings to Iran in last night’s State of the Union, the U. S. Senate passed a broad sanctions bill (by unanimous voice vote) aimed at businesses that supply Iran with gasoline. The House has already passed similar legislation, and the two will have to be reconciled in conference before becoming law.
It is impossible to tell how biting the sanctions will actually be until the final text is in hand since very minor changes in wording can make a big difference. The administration has been seeking a greater degree of flexibility in how these sanctions are enforced and the procedures for granting exceptions to them.
The image above is from today’s Dunya-ye Eghtesad (World of Economics) with the main headline “American private sector against sanctions ” — a reference to the recent letter (PDF) signed by several American business and trade groups protesting that the sanctions are overly vague and:
could prohibit any U.S. company from transacting routine business with critical partners from around the globe even if these transactions have no bearing on business with Iran. These provisions could encompass a very large portion of the global trade community with consequences that in our view have not been adequately assessed. The proposals could have a large impact on the U.S. Export-Import Bank, precluding it from partnering with counterpart agencies abroad to co-finance U.S. exports that have no relation to Iran’s energy sector.
Meanwhile, the National Iranian-American Council has been making the case that gasoline sanctions would put undue pressure on the people of Iran (and less so on the intended target of the regime) and I’ve argued elsewhere that another overlooked drawback to the sanctions is the potentially destabilizing effects they could have on the region by encouraging smuggling of heavily subsidized gasoline from the GCC states.
At present its still too early to tell how “crippling” these sanctions will be, but it seems few of the bill’s opponents were prepared for it to sail through quite this fast. -WW
Iran’s Tabnak news website reports (Persian) that customs workers, labor activists and merchants in the Arvand Free Zone have stopped cooperation with the zone’s management and are forcing commercial goods to be re-routed to the nearby port of Khorramshahr. At issue is a 2% discount in rates that the Free Zone management claims to be the result of a directive from the High Secretariat of Free Zones – a claim the workers deny.
The piece dances around larger problems afoot in Khuzestan, Iran’s southwestern province along the border with Iraq, home to the bulk of the country’s Arab population. Residents are said to be resentful that Ahmadinejad has brought in members of his clique to run the Free Zones at the expense of locals, and there are intimations that dealings in the zone are far from transparent.
While there is nothing in the piece that would suggest that this is anything other than a local dispute, Mohsen Kashmirian, the president of the Khorramshahr Worker’s Rights Organization, is quoted lamenting the economic mismanagement that is a central critique of Ahmadinejad’s presidency:
While in past years the Arvand free Zone had been a huge source of income thanks to the customs and trade workers, unfortunately we see that the zone’s management – especially the present administration – have not shown the commitment necessary to building a platform for growth of trade and commerce at the port – only a neutral and ineffective organization.
After tensions we reported in October, there seems to be increasing cooperating between Iran and Kuwait on natural gas. Payvand reported in November that Iran was in talks with Kuwait and Saudi Arabia for joint development of the Arash/Durra gas field the three countries share. Today, Press TV reports (excerpt below) that talks with Kuwait are progressing over linking Kuwait’s gas network to Iran’s South Pars field. -WW
“Iran’s gas transportation network has already expanded to Khorramshahr in southern Iran and it’s possible to further extend the network to Kuwait,” said Reza Almasi in an interview with Mehr News Agency on Monday.
He said that the plan to link the two countries’ gas networks includes building a submarine pipeline to Kuwait’s border, which is possible in a short time considering the infrastructure of the southern Iranian province of Khuzestan.
The issue of annually exporting 3-4 billion cubic meters of natural gas pumped from Iran’s South Pars gas field to Kuwait was the one of major topics raised in a meeting in November, 2009 between Iranian Oil Minister, Masoud Mirkazemi, and his Kuwaiti counterpart, Sheikh Ahmad Al-Abdullah Al-Sabah, in Tehran.
We have been following Iran’s increasingly severewater shortage over the past year. This problem hurts agricultural yields in Iran and also contributes to cross-border tensions with Iraq. Today’s FT has an article chronicling how water shortages have hurt the Iranian pistachio crop, both in terms of absolute output and output per hectare compared with its closest rival in the market, the United States. The most shocking statistic comes towards the end, that Iranian farmers pick about 800kg of nuts per hectare against 3,200kg in the US.
Pistachios are Iran’s biggest non-oil export and the source of politician Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani’s family fortune, so these changes could have serious political repercussions.
The clip from Al-Jazeera English above gives a bit more background on Iran’s pistachio industry and its rivalry with the U.S. and a snip from the FT article follows:
-WW
Pistachios are one of the Islamic republic’s leading commodities, constituting 11 per cent of non-oil exports – more than Iran’s famous hand-woven carpets, saffron and dates.
They generated $1.2bn in export earnings in 2007 and $800m in 2008, according to the Pistachio Association. It is predicting a figure of $1.2bn for 2009.
The relatively poor showing of the nuts is a symptom of the wider problems afflicting Iran’s agricultural sector, which accounts for about 17 per cent of gross domestic product. Farming suffers from a shortage of investment by the government and the private sector.
Limited funding by banks, under-mechanised systems and the high costs of water make Iranian produce uncompetitive.
Most of the pistachio industry is private and controlled by small-scale farmers. The government does not set prices but it sometimes steps in to buy crops to support farmers.
Roger Haily of Lloyd’s List reports (Dec. 17, 2009) that Iman Khomeini port (IK), will soon be privatised. The statement was delivered by Iran’s Minister of Roads, Hamed Bahbahani at a conference in Tehran. IK, which is located near the Iran-Iraq border, currently handles an estimated 38% of Iran’s trade, including most of the country’s grain imports. Conceived under the Rafsanjani presidency, Iran’s privatisation program slowed considerably under Khatami. Ahmedinejad has increased nominal investment in ports and free zones, while transfering control of facilities from Rafsanjani-era ‘technocrats’ to IRGC stalwarts. The Ahmedinejad government claims to have sold/delivered $63 billion of state-owned equity to the private sector since 2005. –EDC
According to an Op Ed in Friday’s Pan Arab Al-Hayat (”Gulf Doubts Continue on Iran Intentions, Request Participation in Dialogue”, 18 Dec.), GCC members last week called for the West (5+1 countries) to actively include the body in its decision-making on Iran.
According to statements issued during the event, the GCC as an organization has no interest in negotiating with Iran on nuclear issues directly (most of the GCC states have acknowledged Iran’s right to peaceful nuclear energy), but called on the West to incorporate Gulf Arab views, and on Iran to respect international laws and obligations. Bahraini Minister of Foreign Affairs was quoted at another event on the opening day of the Summit as saying “strengthening sanctions on Iran was ‘not a fair measure’”, given the dialogue itself had been severely handicapped by the lack of active participation by the Arab Gulf States. Even as Congress voted to implement penalties on foreign companies found to be selling Iran refined fuel, many in the US Administration are thought to be looking for a way to back down on implementing immediate sanctions, for fear that this will further harden Tehran’s already highly defensive position, and accelerate enrichment. U.S. Asst. Secretary for NEA, Jeffrey Feltman, responding to the GCC statements said from the region (paraphrased) that the US recognises there are some differences in views with respect to Iran policy, and that he would make sure the message was heard in Washington.
All of this underscores the continued chaos and cross-currents that characterize the international response to Iran’s nuclear activities, whether within the US government, the West, or locally. One might be tempted to give the GCC somewhat more credit as a policy organ if summit proceedings hadn’t been taken up with certain member states’ mutual recriminations, and failed attempts to decide the venue of the next summit. –EDC
Iran continues to deploy soft power in the Horn, sponsoring a recent Iranian trade fair (October), and offering some 1m in loans to finance the building of a new Parliament building and Commercial Centre (2004). In the wake of the departure of Royal/Dutch Shell and Total from the Djiboutian/Ethiopian market, local service stations now bear the insignia of OiLibya, a marketing arm of Libya’s National Oil Company. Neither country is a stranger to the Horn, but a strange juxtaposition, next to American and French forces, and loads of Gulf businesses. Further indication of how everything is connected…–EDC
Less then a day after Hillary Clinton, speaking in Doha, warned that Iran was descending into military dictatorship and sought to
