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.
-WW
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)
