Tabnak.ir carried a piece last week describing a particularly candid Q&A between Hashemi Rafsanjani and students at Azad Islamic University in Mashad. During the meeting, Rafsanjani was asked why he had remained ’silent’ on events of the last few months. “I did not remain silent”, Rafsanjani replied, ”my positions are well known.” Rafsanjani expressed dismay at the ‘extremism’ that has enveloped all sides of the political spectrum in the wake of elections. The Chairman of the Assembly of Experts and the Expediency Council, said further he had faith in the power of the Iranian people, as it was they who accomplished the Islamic Revolution–but that in deciding their course of action, all sides must act within the context of the law. –EDC
Water resources shared between Iran and Iraq are becoming a serious source of tension between the two countries. An article (Farsi) published yesterday on Iran’s Tabnak site gives an Iranian take on the increasingly sharp conflict over claims that runoff from Iranian oil refineries and petrochemical plants at Abadan is polluting the shared waterway, known to Persian speakers as the Arvand River and Arabs as the Shatt al-Arab.
Tabnak’s efforts to paint the Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya story as biased (translated excerpts below) seem to belie a genuine Iranian sensitivity to Iraqi public opinion, particularly in the heavily Shia south. In October, Al-Jazeera reported on an Iranian shipment of fresh water to Basra citizens, no doubt also an attempt at damage control with Iraqis. While Iran hardly bats an eye taking on the west over its disputed nuclear program, Tehran seems much more sensitive to criticism closer to home.
-WW
Iraqis blame Arvand River Pollution on Iran
Medical and university officials in the Iraqi province of Basra have accused Iran of polluting the Arvand River. According to the Tabnak correspondent in Iraq, medical and university officials in Basra have accused Iran of polluting the waters of the Arvand River. These officials announced that “Very dangerous petrochemical poisons from the Abadan refinery running into the Arvand river, and entering Iraqi waters have seriously polluted the Shatt al-Arab / Arvand River to the point where its name should be changed to “The Poisoned River.”
Dr. Malik Hassan, a representative of the Basra Ocean Sciences University, stated: “The deadly poisons that have entered the Arvand River and Shatt al-Arab waterway in Iraq are very dangerous, and we have seen an increase in cancers, and diseases of the liver, spleen, digestive tract, and other serious diseases in the southern parts of Iraq, especially Siba, Sayhan, Faw, Zabir, and Basra.”
Despite the pollution and cancer cases of more than 50,000 people in Basra as a result of American use of depleted uranium weapons in the 1991 and 2003 wars, Dr. Hassan asked high-ranking Iraqi officials to put pressure on Iran, and stop rising pollution levels in the Arvand River.
Likewise, Dr. Faris ‘Omara, a doctor in this southern Iraqi province, speaking on an al-Arabiya talk show stated, “With its two petrochemical and oil facilities on the Abadan shores, Iran has poisoned the Arvand River, resulting in the increased the deaths of fish.”…
This [Al-Arabiya] report was broadcast without any mention of the massive pollution that flows from the Iraqi side of the Arvand River. Iraqis, with their own worn down petrochemical plants, have been severely polluting the two waterways that run into the Persian Gulf since the early 1990s….
Found this on the Kayhan website (the London-based opposition Kayhan, not the conservative Iranian paper of the same name). The caption reads “The Islamic Republic’s suggestion to Google” For Farsi speakers, the author, reformist blogger Farhad Heyrani, has some more cartoons on his site.
-WW
I have been scanning Iranian media over the last few days, trying in vein to find a juicy story that explores Iranian perspectives on the unfolding Dubai debt crisis. No luck. Much of the Iranian coverage I have seen has been rehashings of wire service stories that don’t really add much to what’s out there in English.
Why aren’t Iranian media paying much attention? One possibility (as suggested by an IranGCC co-contributor) is that Iran needs all the allies it can get now, and is reluctant to crow about Dubai’s misfortune. I’m more inclined to say its a symptom of the short shrift that foreign economic news tends to get in Iran’s press. In any case, Dubai should be a much bigger story in Iran.
The crisis triggered by Dubai World’s request for a six-month repayment standstill on its debt, precipitated by a crash in overheated property values and the credit crunch, will affect Iran and Iranians in several ways. A quick overview:
Remittances: There are tens of thousands of Iranian nationals and Emiratis of Iranian origin living in Dubai and a number of Iranian institutions (a hospital, elementary schools, a branch of Azad Islamic University, the list goes on). While Iranians will not be hit as hard as Indians, Pakistanis or Filipinos working in the emirate, many will lose their jobs in waves of layoffs.
Property holders: Wealthier Iranians, too, were caught up in the property bubble that is now bursting – no doubt underwater on mortgages or out down payments on developments that will no longer be built. Dubai will surely lose cache as the place for vacation or investment properties, which will likely put a bigger damper on retail sales. Shoppers at the Mall of the Emirates Zara will likely be hearing a lot less Farsi for the next few years.
Banking and Transactions: Iranian banks are not among the top countries with exposure to Dubai World’s debt; most are European, so the banking crisis is not likely to spread across the Gulf. Yet Dubai has long been an offshore hub for Iranian transactions, a role that has intensified as U.S. sanctions began more aggressively targeting Iranian banks. (The U.S. also has a program at Treasury intended to shut down banking opportunities for Iranians in Dubai). Several analysts have been floating the possibility that one of the things Abu Dhabi will demand in return for bailing out Dubai will be a crackdown on Iranians doing business in the emirate.
I am skeptical of the “Abu Dhabi Iran Crackdown” thesis for two reasons. One is that Iranian trade and investments are one of the pillars underpinning Dubai’s recent growth; to alienate Iranian investors, shoppers, property holders would be to freeze out one of the main populations that has made Dubai the hub it is today. Secondly, the volume of trade is so vast (and often informal) that it policing such an agreement would be almost impossible. The pressure from Abu Dhabi on Dubai to cut Iran ties may very well be there, but this will likely amount to a slap on the wrist (indeed, there were reports after the recession began of Dubai visa troubles for a handful of Iranian businessmen). But don’t expect Iranian business out of Dubai any time soon.
-WW
photo courtesy of Flickr user faceymcface1 under a CC license.
Fifty dollars and a respectable-looking business card are enough to gain admission to the five-day Dubai Air Show that begins this Sunday. Organizers expect to draw 50,000 people and 900 exhibitors, up from 45,000 and 850 in 2007. Then, regional governments purchased an incredible $100 billion in new aircraft, both commercial and defense-related. With Gulf economies emerging from the global recession against a backdrop of a Yemeni-Saudi border conflict and the apparent rising specter of Iran, this year’s show is likely to exhibit two broad trends: commercial orders will be down and military orders will be up.
Emirates Airline and the aircraft leasing firm LCAL, both Dubai-based, are exploring the postponement and cancellation of orders of Boeing 787 Dreamliners in advance of the show.
Meanwhile, the attention-getting Eurofighter Typhoon, Europe’s most advanced fighter jet, is making its first appearance in Dubai. Saudi Arabia already has 72 of them from a 2007 deal worth $8.86 billion. As in years past, there will be more than a little bit of keeping up with the GCC Joneses in evidence for 2009— Qatar, the UAE and even Oman have all expressed an interest in placing orders for the Eurofighter.
The Dubai Air Show follows the 9th International Defence Exhibition and Conference (IDEX), held every other year in Abu Dhabi, the largest such event in the Gulf. Journalist Robert Fisk penned an account of the 2001 IDEX in his book “The Great War for Civilisation,” (something of a doorstop, the description begins on page 926 out of a total 1283 pages). Fisk spares little effort in hiding his disgust. He stops to talk with Mikhail Kalashnikov, the aging inventor of the AK-47, then manning a stall in the Russian pavilion. Kalashnikov suggests a time in the future when his weapons “will be no more used or necessary.” To say the least, Fisk is doubtful. The author then moves on to the Iranian pavilion where he finds an arms dealer, Morteza Khosravi, selling a missile called the “Horror of Death.” Khosravi repeats a line familiar to contemporary Iranian discourse: Iran, a peaceful state, has weapons and will also sell them, but each is true only for the purposes of self-defense.
At present, Russia is considering the sale of S300 missiles to Iran. The S300 is capable of shooting down cruise missiles and aircraft— under pressure from Washington, and to the exasperation of Iranian officials, the order has been held up for months. Russia is also weighing sales to the other side of escalating tensions—Saudi Arabia may soon spend $2 billion on S400 missile defense from the Kremlin.
In an October 10th interview, former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal explained, “We are concerned not just as a government but as a people because geographically Iran is next door to us.” As the receipts for military hardware pile up in Dubai over the next week, one could be forgiven for losing their sense of scale. Theories of deterrence may well drive sales but they will also go ignored— Iran’s annual military budget is a paltry $7.31 billion. That amount of money, even with some impossibly deft maneuvering around sanctions, is merely enough to buy Tehran several dozen Eurofighter Typhoons.
-SW
Today from the BBC:
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have won a $2.5bn tender to build a railway route linking the south-eastern port of Chabahar to Iran’s rail network.
Transport minister Hamid Behbahani said it was part of a transit route for goods from Chabahar to the north-eastern border town of Sarakhs.
The Guards’ engineering wing, Khatam-ol-Anbia, has been awarded government contracts worth billions of dollars.
The BBC article puts the rail contract in context of the IRGC’s increasing influence in Iran’s economy and politics. Certainly a valid angle, but there is a bit more to the story. Chabahar is one of Iran’s coastal free zones, meant both to create Iranian jobs and to boost Iranian trade with Central Asia. The port was reinvigorated in 2004 and has been financed almost entirely by India, as a rival to Pakistan’s nearby Gwadar port (Registan has a useful backgrounder on the two ports here). The railroad in question will link Chabahar to the Turkmen border, thus giving India a trade route to Central Asia that bypasses Pakistan. The original article (Farsi) makes no mention of any Indian financing for the deal, but given the gobs of money they’ve spent on developing Chabahar I wouldn’t be surprised if they are paying for the rails too.
-WW
As the recent Saudi air and ground raids along the Yemeni border intensified, Egypt’s Nilesat TV network and Saudi-owned Arabsat simultaneously dropped Iran’s Arabic-language news station al-Alam (The World) from service. When living in Cairo I would occasionally tune into the station and watch some of their bog standard pro-Iranian news coverage or a stale documentary about the Iran-Iraq war. To me, the real surprise was that Egypt and Saudi Arabia would continue to allow the Iranian propaganda station on their satellites at all during a time when the two states were locked in a media war with Tehran.
The “media war,” going strong since mid-2008, was equal parts vicious and absurd: for the absurd see my article at ISN from a while back on a bungled Iranian documentary film portraying Sadat’s assassin, Khaled Islamboli, as a martyr, and for vicious, see the Egyptian accusations that radicalized pro-Iranian Egyptians committed last year’s Khan el-Khalili bombing. Another facet was Arab accusations of Iranian proselytizing of Shi’a Islam around the Arab world.
Was al-Alam taking the Houthi rebels’ side in coverage of the current strikes? A quick scan of articles on al-Alam’s front page indicates that they were, but the thrust was more anti-Saudi, casting Riyadh as the aggressor, than it was pro-Houthi. But the anti-Saudi messaging is hardly stronger than the stuff that al-Alam had been broadcasting (on Saudi and Egyptian satellite bandwidth) for the last few years.
The question of material Iranian aid for the Houthi rebels, which have been fighting the Yemeni central government in on-off wars since 2004, is much more murky. The Yemeni army has essentially blockaded the Sa’ada Governorate, and cut off access to independent press or NGOs to the warzone for the last few years (Although HRW put out an excellent report on the situation a few years back, which is here). Absent reliable information, accusations of Iranian funding for the Huthi rebels, who are Zaidi Shi’a (as opposed to Iran’s Twelvers), have flown and been multiplied amid tense regional circumstances.
But after spending several days protesting its own involvement, today, Iran’s Mottaki fired away at Saudi Arabia for its interference in Yemen. BBC snippet:
A country which seeks a role to establish peace and stability in all countries in the region… cannot have a role in creating tensions,” Mr Mottaki said.
“We strongly warn the regional countries to be careful, to be vigilant,” he added.
“Monetary aid, providing arms to extremist and terrorist groups or actually taking action against them and crushing those groups or the people and embarking on military operations – these all will have negative consequences.”
In an apparent reference to Saudi Arabia, with whom Tehran has had hostile relations since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Mr Mottaki said there were “certain people who add fuel to some crises”.
“Those people should be assured that the smoke and the fire they have ignited will entangle them themselves,” he added.
This incident, far from over, has taken Saudi-Iranian tensions to their highest point in years. At very least, the episode will further hamstring those who seek to integrate Iran into the region and help those pushing the Sunni-Shia strife narrative. At worst, we could have a potentially destabilizing conflict in Southern Arabia. Either way, the citizens of Sa’ada will continue to pay a heavy price, as international attention is focused elsewhere.
-WW
If you have about seven extra hours to spare this week I highly recommend watching the proceedings of the recent University of Maryland conference on Iran that brought together many of the top pro-negotiation voices. I’m working on a longer roundup piece on US-Iran negotiations, but in the meantime the link is here.
-WW
Iran’s Oil and Energy Information Network has a story (Persian) on two energy deals that Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan concluded on his recent visit to Tehran. Under the headline “Conditions for Transfer of Iranian Gas to Europe have been Met,” the piece quotes Ahmadinejad’s Vice President Mohammadreza Rahimi praising “brotherly” relations with Turkey and the signing of trade initiatives that would eventually total $30B.
Rahimi mentions two specific initiatives, one to cooperate towards developing an additional 6,000 MW of power generation capacity in the two countries. Second is an an agreement for Iran to supply gas to Europe via Turkey (presumably through the planned Nabucco pipeline) and also to act as a transhipment route for Turkmen gas en route to Europe.
Using Iranian gas to fill Nabucco has been discussed before, but this marks a step closer towards making it a reality. The deal, and Erdogan’s high profile visit to Tehran, are no doubt ruffling feathers in DC, but there has been little official reaction to the visit so far. This seems like another example of the “’sleeping with your friends’ enemies” argument that Bryan Early advances here. In sum, friends of a sanctioning state are in fact more likely to flout sanctions and trade restrictions because of security afforded by the alliance with the sanctioning state. Turkey’s alliance with the U.S. by virtue of NATO membership means that the U.S. is likely to be less able to compel it to adopt its Iran-isolating agenda.
-WW
