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Faced for the past four days with blazes across the country fed by drought and high winds, Israel received airborne assistance from Russia, Turkey, Greece and Croatia.
The flames in many places appeared to be easing somewhat despite the persistent wind, but a new fire erupted close to Jerusalem on Friday afternoon that the emergency services said was apparently started deliberately.
“Things can change and develop as we speak,” police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP.
Support from France, Spain and others was due while a US Supertanker, considered the largest firefighting aircraft in the world, was expected to arrive Friday night. More here.
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180 injured, 560 homes burnt after 5 days of raging fires
Some 2,500 firefighters marshalled, half a million tons of water and flame retardant unleashed in 480 missions to battle the flames which incinerated hundreds of homes, forced the evacuation of hundreds of thousands; after 5 days of blazes, authorities report that flames finally brought under control.
Overall, three people were moderately injured as a result of the conflagrations, one senior from Haifa, two from Ma’ale Adumim and another 129 who were left in light condition. According to estimates, another 50 people admitted themselves to hospital in light condition.
Over the weekend, 186 fresh fires lit up the country, marking a marginal decrease from an average of 200-250 daily fire incidents.
Photo: Gil Yohanan
As fire crews fought around the clock to quench the flames, last week saw the deployment of approximately 2,000 firefighters, along with 450 IDF Search and Rescue soldiers and 69 Cypriot soldiers.
The firefighting forces unleashed a total of half a million tons of water and flame retardant. Ten countries contributed to the effort while 14 Israeli firefighting planes took to the skies, with the number of combined missions reaching 480. Some of the buildings have infrastructural problems and have thus been declared as dangerous for residence. A total of 1,616 residents have been left homeless.
Donald Trump’s transition team is getting a helping hand from the Obama administration on national security matters.
The administration is giving the president-elect and a select few of his top advisers sensitive intelligence briefings.
And, in addition, Trump and his team will take part in two so-called ‘black swan’ exercises that simulate a domestic or national security emergency.
The exercises are intended to help an incoming administration learn how to manage a crisis in real time in case there is some kind of global or domestic emergency in the first days of a Trump presidency.
A black swan exercise would, for example, ensure that a fledgling Trump administration knows how to activate the proper federal agencies to maintain stability.
According to a briefing book from the nonpartisan Center for Presidential Transition, in 2008 the Bush administration hosted two black swan exercises for then president-elect Obama’s national security team. More here from ABC.
Islamic State is urging its followers to carry out acts of terrorism in New York City during the upcoming, Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Jamie Schram writes in this morning’s (Nov. 14, 2016) New York Post, that “ISIS is offering a detailed how-to on using trucks as weapons of mass destruction — noting that the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade would be an ‘excellent target.”
MEMRI: On November 11, 2016, Al-Hayat, one of the media centers of the Islamic State (ISIS), released the third issue of its monthly magazine Rumiyah featuring an article calling on lone wolves in the U.S. and Europe to use trucks to target large outdoor conventions, crowded streets, outdoor markets, festivals, parades, and political rallies. The article also emphasized the importance of using trucks in terrorist attacks, and provided suggestions on “ideal vehicles” to use and tactical tips for the preparation and planning of attacks.
The article, titled “Just Terror Tactics,” features images of rental trucks from companies such as Hertz and U-Haul, as well as a picture showing the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City. It begins by highlighting the “destructive capability” of motor vehicles and referring to the Bastille Day attack in Nice, France on July 14, 2016. While praising the Nice attacker, the article states: “This was superbly demonstrated in the attack launched by the brother Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel who, while traveling at the speed of approximately 90 kilometers per hour, plowed his 19-ton load-bearing truck into crowds celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, France, harvesting through his attack the slaughter of 86 Crusader citizens and injuring 434 more.”
The article stresses the importance of using a vehicle that can inflict maximum damage, and describes the “ideal” vehicles for lone wolf attacks as “load-bearing trucks, large in size, reasonably fast in speed or rate of acceleration, heavy in weight, double-wheeled, possessing a slightly raised chassis.” The article continued: “If accessible, [vehicles] with a metal outer frame which are usually found in older cars [should be used], as the stronger outer frame allows for more damage to be caused when the vehicle is slammed into crowds, contrary to newer cars that are usually made of plastics and other weaker materials.”
Providing suggestions on how to acquire the vehicle, the article noted that buying it is the “easiest” option; however, it also mentioned renting, borrowing from relatives and acquaintances, hotwiring, and carjacking as additional options. Under “applicable targets” the article listed: “Large outdoor conventions and celebrations, pedestrian-congested streets, outdoor markets, festivals, parades and political rallies.”
The article further emphasized that in order to inflict maximum damage, attackers should consider targeting “any outdoor attraction that draws large crowds,” stating that “it is not conditional to target gatherings restricted to government or military personnel only. All so-called ‘civilian’ (and low-security) parades and gatherings are fair game and more devastating to Crusader nations.”
As for “preparation and planning,” the article recommended “assessing vehicle for roadworthiness, filling vehicle with a sufficient amount of fuel, mapping out the route of the attack, surveying the route for obstacles, such as posts, signs, barriers, humps, bus stops, dumpsters, and if accessible, a secondary weapon should be attained.”
The article also provided ideas for attackers to use in order to declare their affiliation to ISIS to “have their motives acknowledged” such as writing “ISIS will remain” or “I am a soldier of the Islamic State” on pieces of papers and throwing them out of the vehicle’s window during the attack.
The article concludes by instructing attackers to stay inside their vehicles until they are no longer movable and then to start shooting pedestrians, first responders and security forces until they are killed.
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Black Swan exercises are those that prepare for the unexpected and several events worldwide have been part of these operations.
1. Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) or Solar Burst
As The Heritage Foundation highlighted in the documentary 33 Minutes,[3] an EMP attack could throw America back to the pre-Industrial Revolution era. A powerful solar burst would have the same impact. Should either event occur, people would have little time to react, and the damage would be incalculable.
If the U.S. were to lose power for any prolonged period of time, given the sheer number of people located in the interior of the country, mass starvation and death would become a reality. Most experts consider these events as highly unlikely ones, so little investment or planning is done related to them.
2. Pandemic Virus
Although the U.S. has prepared for a pandemic influenza outbreak, little preparation has gone into other potential viruses. More importantly, it is the unknown virus or “super virus” that represents a Black Swan for America. Recall that it was less than 30 years ago that AIDS first began embedding itself in North America. If a far more deadly and communicable virus hits America, the U.S. would quickly expend its existing resources.
3. Nuclear or Radiological Event
The U.S. has extensive knowledge of what would happen if a nuclear or radiological explosion occurred in a major American city. Theory, however, is a poor replacement for the reality of large numbers of deaths, burn victims, and physical debris. As former Vice President Dick Cheney wisely concluded, because of the sheer consequences, even a 1 percent chance of such an event occurring requires the nation to expend the necessary resources to prevent it.
4. Super-Volcanic Eruption
Seismic activity around the Yellowstone caldera is monitored, but tectonic shifts miles below the surface could result in the buildup of pressure and a super-volcanic eruption. The volcano beneath Yellowstone previously erupted, causing destruction as far away as California, Iowa, and Louisiana. An eruption, though unlikely given current readings, could have truly catastrophic consequences.
5. Nor’Easter/Hurricane
Hurricanes strike America with a fair degree of frequency. A Black Swan event would be a Nor’easter combined with a powerful hurricane that strikes New York City in the same manner as Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans. Between the massive flooding and wind damage, New York City could sustain casualties and physical destruction well in excess of Katrina.
How Prepared Is the U.S.?
The honest and unfortunate answer to that question is unknown and, despite attempts to ascertain that answer, will not be known if existing policy remains in place. A Black Swan by definition becomes a Black Swan because it results in catastrophic outcomes. This “delicate” balance between preparing for events and not being able to prepare adequately for all events represents the ultimate risk-based decision making.
From 2003 to 2011, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) distributed roughly $40 billion in funding to states and localities across America. Despite years of reporting requirements, DHS is fundamentally unable to state with any degree of certainty which capabilities exist, where those capabilities exist, the level of those capabilities, and the remaining capability needs. DHS knows it has funded the acquisition of many things, but specifics beyond that are unquantifiable.
Specifically, to gain a full accounting, Congress should:
Be fiscally responsible. Rather than continue to spread federal funds using an “inch thick and a mile wide” mentality, Congress should target federal funds at the highest-risk states, cities, and counties where the funds could meaningfully increase the security of Americans, including reducing the number of high-risk cities that are eligible for special funding.
Examine cooperative agreements. The need for equality downplays the need for the grant structure and invites another approach—such as the use of cooperative agreements, where the federal government and the states can sit down as true and equal partners and negotiate outcomes at the beginning and then direct funds to achieve those desired outcomes without the need for yearly applications.
Appoint a Black Swan commission. Rather than wait until after a catastrophic event has occurred, Congress should appoint an independent commission for the express purpose of analyzing the threats of a potential Black Swan, identifying existing capabilities, and making recommendations on how best to correct errors made thus far and accelerate closing the gap between where the nation stands today and where it needs to be tomorrow. The commission must have the independence and resources to quickly do its job after a full review of the status quo.
Expect the Unexpected
If the catastrophe in Japan has taught any lessons, it is that America must prepare for the unexpected with as much vigor as it prepares for the expected. Because a Black Swan can be so catastrophic, in many ways the ideal role for the federal government is to lead an effort surrounding those events. With the nation’s current fiscal challenges, conserving resources for catastrophic events is more vital than ever. More here from Heritage.
LWJ: As activity in the Red Sea has heated up this month, debate rages on in Washington about Tehran’s role in attacks against US forces there. The Pentagon confirmed this month that the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen were responsible for launching cruise missiles at the USS Mason on Oct. 9 and 12, while it still investigates a potential third attack on Oct. 15. The confirmed attacks, which prompted US strikes against Houthi installations on the coast, were reportedly in retaliation for US backing of the Saudi-led coalition aimed at expelling them from the capital.
It is not definitively known whether Iran supplied the missiles, but the motives are clear as to why they would have supported the attack.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Hezbollah have provided the Houthis with money, training, advising, and sophisticated weaponry for more than a decade, according to the State Department’s Country Reports on Terrorism 2012 (though that language was dropped in 2015). The Guard is believed to have transferred rocket and missile capabilities, as well. The US and its allies have intercepted five shipments from Iran to the Houthis since April 2015 that have included coastal defense systems, according to a senior U.S. official who spoke with NBC News. Tehran has stepped up its assistance since May 2016, sending anti-ship missiles, explosives, and personnel through Oman, according to Reuters, who spoke with Western and Iranian intelligence officials.
Some senior US defense officials say the missile system used against US forces may have been supplied by Iran, identified as the Chinese-made C-802, which was supplied to Iran and not to Yemen. Other senior military officials, however, say that the missiles could have been models that the Houthi forces already possessed. Yemeni military units under the command of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh that defected to the Houthis had access to the C-801, which was supplied by China to Yemen in 1995, and unsuccessfully launched several at Saudi-led coalition between Oct. and Dec. 2015, according to Tom Cooper in War is Boring.
Analysts who spoke with The Long War Journal believe the Houthi-Saleh forces may have used C-801 or C-802 against the US Navy, and that the C-801 was likely fired at the United Arab Emirates-operated vessel on Oct. 1, based on video footage posted by the Houthis. Iranian and Hezbollah media publicized a drill held by the Houthi-Saleh Yemeni coast on Oct. 4 in reaction to the US Navy dispatch of the Mason, Nitze, and Ponce, warning “the enemies” and “invading Saudi coalition” that any ship approaching Yemen’s waters “without permission” would be targeted.
Although there is no conclusive evidence yet on the weapons system used against US forces, Tehran’s political posturing following the Oct. 8 bombing in Sanaa foreshadowed its support for the missile launches against U.S. forces. On Oct. 9, the IRGC released a statement holding “America, the Zionist regime, and the House of Saud” responsible for the bombing in Sanaa. Top IRGC officials also held the US directly responsible for the attack and for selling weapons to Saudi Arabia. Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, slammed the bombing, and claimed that the attack against the UAE ship was a “legitimate defense” of Yemen’s territory.
Then, on Oct. 13, the IRGC-affiliated agency Tasnim announced that a conventional Iranian Navy group had earlier departed for the Gulf of Aden and the Bab el-Mandeb on Oct. 5 in response to the US dispatch of Navy warships. Iran’s 44th flotilla, comprised of the Alvand frigate and Bushehr support vessel, reportedly intends to “protect shipping lines under attack by pirates” in that area. The deployment, however, was also intended to reinforce Tehran’s commitment to the Houthis, as well as signal Iran’s reach into the Gulf of Aden. Read more here from LWJ.
America paid Iran $1.7 billion in cash—funds that by law were not to be released unless and until Iran paid what it owed to American victims of its terrorism.
Mosaic: On the morning of January 17, 2016, President Obama declared that this was “a good day, because, once again, we’re seeing what’s possible with strong American diplomacy.”
The Iran nuclear deal had been implemented the day before—an example, the President said, of his “smart, patient, and disciplined approach to the world.” Now Iran was releasing five American hostages, the result of the administration’s “tireless” efforts. “On the sidelines of the nuclear negotiations,” the president explained, “our diplomats at the highest level, including Secretary [of State John] Kerry, used every meeting to push Iran to release our Americans.” In return for that gesture, the president continued, he was making a “reciprocal humanitarian gesture”: namely, clemency for seven Iranians imprisoned or awaiting trial for criminal violations of American sanctions. Later it was announced that the U.S. had also dropped outstanding warrants against another fourteen Iranians.
The president then added something else: with the nuclear deal implemented, and the hostages released, “the time was right” for “resolving a financial dispute that dated back more than three decades.” That dispute involved an Iranian claim regarding money advanced by the government of the Shah for military equipment that Washington did not deliver after the 1979 revolution. Now, the president asserted, we were returning Iran’s “own funds,” including “appropriate interest,” but “much less than the amount Iran sought.” The savings, he said, came potentially to “billions”—a figure quantified by his press secretary as “up to $6 billion or $7 billion” in a “very good deal for taxpayers.” In other words, now that the larger issues had been resolved, the U.S. was simply issuing a long-delayed refund to Iran, and in the process saving Americans a significant amount of money.
The president’s statement, however, omitted a great deal of relevant information. The president was returning $400 million in Iran’s “Foreign Military Sales” (FMS) account with the Pentagon, plus $1.3 billion in interest, but he failed to mention that in 1981, when Iran filed its claim before the Claims Tribunal at The Hague, the U.S. had responded with a counterclaim for $817 million for Iran’s violations of its obligations under the FMS program. In 2016, with both the claim and the counterclaim still pending, it was possible that Iran owed billions of dollars to the U.S., not the reverse.
Nor did the president mention the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act, signed by President Bill Clinton in 2000 and stipulating that Iran’s FMS account could not be refunded until court judgments held by the U.S. government against Iran for damages from terrorist acts against American citizens were resolved to America’s satisfaction. Those judgments, including interest accumulated between 2001 and 2016, totaled about $1 billion. The president did not explain how, under the 2000 law, with those judgments still outstanding, he could pay Iran anything at all.
Nor did the president mention that his “refund” to Iran was being paid in untraceable European cash, a fact discovered by reporters seven months later. He would then contend that, in light of the sanctions on banking transactions with Iran, “we had to give them cash.” But the sanction regulations expressly authorize bank payments to settle Iran’s claims at The Hague, as Michael Mukasey, the former U.S. attorney general, later testified to Congress, adding that there was “no legitimate reason why [Iran] should want cash other than to pursue terrorism.” Indeed, the Hizballah International Financing Prevention Act, passed by Congress in December 2015, had resulted in Tehran’s needing significantly more cash to continue funding its terrorist organization in Lebanon, Syria, and elsewhere.
In a February 3 letter, Ed Royce, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, asked the administration to provide the legal basis for paying Iran’s claim, as well as a specific computation of the interest paid. He repeated the request in a June 1 letter, adding that according to information provided to him by the Congressional Research Service, the Hague tribunal paid 10-percent simple interest on such claims. Computed at that rate, and before considering the U.S. counterclaim under the FMS and the terror judgments still outstanding, Iran’s total claim on the FMS account was virtually identical to the $1.7 billion the administration paid, with no “billions” in savings.
To date, the administration has released no legal analysis to support its payment, no evaluation of the U.S. counterclaim, no text of the settlement agreement, no computation of the interest, no credible explanation for issuing the payment in cash, and no document showing the approval of the attorney general as required for issuing such a payment. For months, the administration hid important facts—including how the settlement was paid—even in response to direct congressional inquiries.
The $1.7-billion payment thus appears to have been a ransom, just as an Iranian general claimed it was at the time—a huge cash payment to accompany the lopsided exchange of 21 Iranians, duly charged or convicted under American law, for five American hostages who had been seized by Iran and held on fabricated charges in secret proceedings.
As for the outstanding claims against Tehran for the terror judgments, the administration has asserted that these were satisfied “by securing a favorable resolution on the interest owed to Iran.” What favorable resolution? In effect, the settlement cost the United States $2.7 billion—the $1.7 billion in cash plus about $1 billion in forgiven court judgments—to pay a claim that was not yet due, may not in fact have been owed, and may have been more than offset by the U.S. counterclaim that exceeded Iran’s own claim.
And therein lies the most troubling aspect of President Obama’s settlement, which is neither its amount nor its appearance as ransom but the fact that Iran succeeded in having U.S. taxpayers bear the cost of the damages owed by Iran for committing despicable acts of terrorism against them. To understand the magnitude of what the President did on January 17, some background is necessary.
In April 1995, Alisa Flatow, a twenty-year-old Brandeis University honors student spending her junior year abroad in Israel, boarded a bus in Jerusalem bound for a popular resort area in Gaza. It was the height of the “peace process,” celebrated the year before with Nobel Peace prizes. As the bus entered Gaza, a van filled with explosives slammed into it. Eight people, including Alisa, were killed, and more than 40 others were injured. The attack was carried out by a faction of Islamic Jihad controlled, financed, and directed by the highest levels of Iran’s government.
Alisa’s father, Stephen M. Flatow, filed suit in U.S. federal court against Iran, pursuant to legislation Congress had enacted permitting such suits against state sponsors of terrorist attacks on American citizens. A federal district court issued a 35-page opinion, Flatow v. Islamic Republic of Iran (1998), awarding a total of $20 million in compensatory damages as well as punitive damages, with both types of damages specifically authorized by the U.S. Congress. The court noted that expert testimony had “detailed an annual expenditure [by Iran] of approximately $75 million for terrorist activities” and that Iran “is so brazen in its sponsorship of terrorist activities that it carries a line item in its national budget for this purpose.” Accordingly, the court awarded punitive damages of $225 million—three times Iran’s publicly-disclosed annual terrorist budget. It was the minimum amount the expert had testified was necessary to have a significant deterrent effect, which was what Congress had intended to achieve in its authorizing legislation.
Over the next four years, a series of cases held Iran liable for similarly horrific terror operations. Cicippio v. Islamic Republic of Iran (1998) involved Joseph Cicippio (comptroller of the American University of Beirut), David Jacobsen (CEO of the medical center there), and Frank Reed (who operated two private schools in Beirut)—all abducted by Hizballah, an entity the court found was “sponsored, financed, and controlled by Iran.” Jacobsen had been chained and blindfolded for eighteen months; Reed had been held blindfolded or in darkness for more than three-and-a-half years; Cicippio had been held for over five years, chained in scorpion-infested cells and randomly beaten throughout his captivity. The court awarded them a total of $65 million in compensatory damages.
Anderson v. Islamic Republic of Iran (2000) involved Terry Anderson, chief Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press, who was kidnapped in Beirut by Hizballah and held shackled in filthy conditions for nearly seven years, fed only bread and water. The court again found Iran responsible, and awarded $41.2 million in compensatory damages and $300 million in punitive damages.
Eisenfeld v. Islamic Republic of Iran (2000) was brought by Leonard Eisenfeld for the death of his son Matthew, a twenty-five-year-old Yale graduate studying at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Israel, and by Arline Duker for the death of her twenty-year-old daughter, Sara, a Barnard College graduate enrolled in a program at the Hebrew University. They had been on an Israeli bus, en route to visit the archeological site at Petra, Jordan, when a passenger—acting under directions from a Hamas official funded and trained by Iran—detonated a bomb that destroyed the bus and killed them and others. The court awarded $22.5 million in compensatory damages and $300 million in punitive damages.
In still other cases, Iran was held legally responsible for the kidnapping, torture, and death of CIA station chief William Buckley in Beirut; the kidnapping of Father Lawrence Jenco, the director of Catholic Relief Services in Beirut, held for 564 days in conditions described by the court as “little better than [for] a caged animal”; the kidnapping of Thomas M. Sutherland, the dean of Agricultural and Food Sciences at the American University of Beirut, tortured for more than six years; the murder of Petty Officer Raymond Wagner in the 1983 car bombing of the American embassy in Beirut; the murder of Petty Officer Robert Stethem, beaten during the hijacking of TWA Flight 847, his body dumped on the tarmac, and the holding of nine other American hostages on that flight; and many other hostage-takings, with one court noting that Tehran “virtually directed the terms and conditions under which hostages would be held or released.”
In all, sixteen cases were decided against Iran by courts in the United States between 1998 and 2004, with awards of compensatory damages totaling some $400 million and punitive damages totaling $3.5 billion.
Of course, the problem faced by each victorious plaintiff was collecting the judgment. Stephen Flatow, after unsuccessfully seeking to have the damages paid out of various Iranian assets held in the United States, learned of the $400 million in the FMS fund. The Clinton administration had supported the legislation that allowed suits such as Flatow’s, but then strenuously opposed any effort to have the judgments satisfied from that fund. In its 1999 brief in federal court, the administration stated that the U.S. had a $817-million counterclaim against Iran, that the “current cash balance in Iran’s FMS program account [was] about $400 million,” and that “It is unknown how much, if any, of that amount will be owed to Iran by the United States until the claims before the [Hague] Tribunal are resolved” (emphasis added).
The court rejected Flatow’s contention that the FMS funds were the property of Iran, which could satisfy his judgment, on the grounds that “the United States does not share [his] characterization of these U.S. Treasury funds as ‘Iranian property.’” The court held instead that the FMS fund was U.S. property.
With Flatow’s subsequent appeal pending, Congress and the Clinton administration agreed on legislation directing the U.S. Treasury to pay the American holders of terror judgments against Iran for the amount of their compensatory damages plus 10 percent of their punitive damages, up to the amount in the FMS fund. The law subrogated the United States—meaning that the terror judgments became direct U.S. government claims against Iran to the extent the Treasury had paid them. Finally, the law included a provision to ensure that Iran would ultimately have to bear the cost of those payments: “no funds shall be paid to Iran . . . from the [FMS] fund until such subrogated claims have been dealt with to the satisfaction of the United States.”
Sixteen years later, with the $400 million still held by the U.S. government, and with no payments by Iran of a single cent of any of the sixteen court judgments against it, President Obama nevertheless gave the $400 million in the FMS account to Iran, plus interest. His statement that he was merely refunding Iran’s “own funds” directly contradicts the court’s determination in 1999. Indeed, since he made no mention of “resolving” the unpaid terror judgments in his January 17 statement, it is reasonable to conclude that the president simply ignored the 2000 statute as well.
January 17, 2016, was thus very far from “a good day . . . [for] strong American diplomacy.” It was a day of extraordinary diplomatic deception, practiced not against Iran—which knew exactly what the administration was doing—but against the American people, who were intentionally kept in the dark by the administration about critical aspects of the deal. President Obama paid Iran $1.7 billion that may not have been owed; paid it in cash—the currency of international terror; did not tell the American people he had relieved Iran from longstanding court judgments; did not add the cost of those judgments to the $1.7 billion payment that he announced; and did not faithfully execute the 2000 law—all the while congratulating himself on his accomplishment and claiming he had saved the U.S. billions.
The president’s actions with respect to the lawsuits won by American victims of Iranian terror, after years of litigation, stand in stark contrast to the resolution of the court cases concerning Libya’s terrorism, including the 1988 Pan Am 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland. In 2008, Libya sought to re-establish relations with the United States, but Congress and the State Department blocked action until Libya satisfied the terror claims of American citizens against it. Libya agreed to pay and did pay the U.S. $1.5 billion to resolve those claims. Nothing of the sort accompanied the seemingly endless negotiations with Iran over the nuclear deal, as the administration made concession after concession to obtain it.
January 17, 2016 was in fact a shameful day in the history of American diplomacy. The only question is which aspect was most shameful: the craven abandonment of American claims against the Islamic Republic of Iran for past terrorism, the provision of a huge amount of cash enabling it to engage in future terrorism, the systematic mendacity about the process and the willful failure to inform the American people of everything that had been done, or the underlying policy of appeasing Iran that precipitated both the process and its cover-up.
What happened on January 17, 2016 was much worse than paying ransom.
H. R. 5931, a bill in Congress is designed to stop all future payments of any sort to Iran.
Senator Grassley’s letter to Loretta Lynch demanding answers to 5 questions is here.
Congress: Attorney General
Lynch ‘Pleads Fifth’ on Secret Iran ‘Ransom’ Payments
Obama admin blocking congressional probe into cash payments to Iran
Attorney General Loretta Lynch is declining to comply with an investigation by leading members of Congress about the Obama administration’s secret efforts to send Iran $1.7 billion in cash earlier this year, prompting accusations that Lynch has “pleaded the Fifth” Amendment to avoid incriminating herself over these payments, according to lawmakers and communications exclusively obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) and Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.) initially presented Lynch in October with a series of questions about how the cash payment to Iran was approved and delivered.
In an Oct. 24 response, Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik responded on Lynch’s behalf, refusing to answer the questions and informing the lawmakers that they are barred from publicly disclosing any details about the cash payment, which was bound up in a ransom deal aimed at freeing several American hostages from Iran.
The response from the attorney general’s office is “unacceptable” and provides evidence that Lynch has chosen to “essentially plead the fifth and refuse to respond to inquiries regarding [her] role in providing cash to the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism,” Rubio and Pompeo wrote on Friday in a follow-up letter to Lynch, according to a copy obtained by the Free Beacon.
The inquiry launched by the lawmakers is just one of several concurrent ongoing congressional probes aimed at unearthing a full accounting of the administration’s secret negotiations with Iran.
“It is frankly unacceptable that your department refuses to answer straightforward questions from the people’s elected representatives in Congress about an important national security issue,” the lawmakers wrote. “Your staff failed to address any of our questions, and instead provided a copy of public testimony and a lecture about the sensitivity of information associated with this issue.”
“As the United States’ chief law enforcement officer, it is outrageous that you would essentially plead the fifth and refuse to respond to inquiries,” they stated. “The actions of your department come at time when Iran continues to hold Americans hostage and unjustly sentence them to prison.”
The lawmakers included a copy of their previous 13 questions and are requesting that Lynch provide answers by Nov. 4.
When asked about Lynch’s efforts to avoid answering questions about the cash payment, Pompeo told the Free Beacon that the Obama administration has blocked Congress at every turn as lawmakers attempt to investigate the payments to Iran.
“Who knew that simple questions regarding Attorney General Lynch’s approval of billions of dollars in payments to Iran could be so controversial that she would refuse to answer them?” Pompeo said. “This has become the Obama administration’s coping mechanism for anything related to the Islamic Republic of Iran—hide information, obfuscate details, and deny answers to Congress and the American people.”
“They know this isn’t a sustainable strategy, however, and I trust they will start to take their professional, and moral, obligations seriously,” the lawmaker added.
In the Oct. 24 letter to Rubio and Pompeo, Assistant Attorney General Kadzik warned the lawmakers against disclosing to the public any information about the cash payment.
Details about the deal are unclassified, but are being kept under lock and key in a secure facility on Capitol Hill, the Free Beacon first disclosed. Lawmakers and staffers who have clearance to view the documents are forced to relinquish their cellular devices and are barred from taking any notes about what they see.
“Please note that these documents contain sensitive information that is not appropriate for public release,” Kadzik wrote to the lawmakers. “Disclosure of this information beyond members of the House and Senate and staff who are able to view them could adversely affect the diplomatic relations of the United States, including with key allies, as well as the State Department’s ability to defend [legal] claims against the United States [by Iran] that are still being litigated at the Hague Tribunal.”
“The public release of any portion of these documents, or the information contained therein, is not authorized by the transmittal of these documents or by this communication,” Kadzik wrote.
Congressional sources have told the Free Beacon that this is another part of the effort to hide details about these secret negotiations with Iran from the American public.
One senior congressional source familiar with both the secret documents and the inquiry into them told the Free Beacon that the details of the negotiations are so damning that the administration’s best strategy is to ignore lawmakers’ requests for more information.
“Every Obama administration official and department involved in the Iran Deal appear to be running for cover,” the source said. “Like we feared, the [Iran deal] is turning out to be a disaster and Iran is emboldened in its aggression. Evidently Attorney General Lynch and the Department of Justice have decided ‘refusal to cooperate’ is their best strategy. But this is dangerous and ultimately won’t protect them from anything.”
Update: The headline has been updated to more accurately characterize the story.
The deal – as well as the interim agreement known as the Joint Plan of Action (JPOA) – provided Iran with substantial economic relief that helped the regime avoid a severe economic crisis and return to a modest recovery path. The lifting of restrictions on Iran’s use of frozen overseas assets as part of the interim agreement returned about $11.9 billion to Iran. The final agreement provided Tehran with access to a further $100 billion, including over $50 billion in unencumbered, liquid cash, according to the Obama administration.2 These funds gave Tehran badly needed hard currency to settle its outstanding debts, begin to repair its economy, build up its diminished foreign exchange reserves, and ease a budgetary crisis, as well as providing the regime greater resources for the financing of terrorism and other illicit activities.
The nuclear deal did nothing to address the full range of Iran’s malign activities, including ballistic missile development, support for terrorism, regional destabilization, and human rights abuses. Iran also still owes American terrorism victims and their families more than $55 billion in unpaid, outstanding damages awarded by American courts. (…)
A key driver of these threats remains the Islamic Republic’s ability to bankroll and finance a host of terrorist groups, militias, and proxy forces throughout the Middle East,6 including Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and designated Iraqi Shiite militias, as well expanding the existing asymmetric military capabilities of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its elite Quds Force. Iran remains the world’s largest and most dangerous state sponsor of terrorism, according to President Obama’s State Department.7
Iran’s ability to access cash outside the formal banking system is crucial in supporting these activities. Tehran also cash for other malign activities that it aggressively supports: WMD procurement, missile and heavy weaponry procurement, as well as aid to the murderous regime of Bashir al-Assad in Syria, designated Shiite militias, the Houthis in Yemen, and other malign actors.
In part from Washington Post: As the Obama administration scrambles for options in Syria, officials lament that the United States has no leverage over the Assad regime, Russia or Iran to persuade them to halt their ongoing atrocities, especially in Aleppo. But behind the scenes, the White House is actually working to weaken a sanctions bill lawmakers in both parties see as providing leverage against all three.
According to lawmakers and staffers in both parties, the White House is secretly trying to water down the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, a bipartisan bill that would sanction the Assad regime for mass torture, mass murder, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The bill, guided by House Foreign Affairs Committee ranking Democrat Eliot Engel (N.Y.), would also sanction entities that aid the Syrian government in these atrocities; that includes Russia and Iran.
The bill, named after a Syrian defector who presented the world with 55,000 pictures documenting Assad’s mass torture and murder of more than 11,000 civilians in custody, has 70 co-sponsors, a majority of whom are Democrats. More here.
In wake of Arab Spring, Iran’s backing of foreign militias has drawn much attention. Why is this support so central to Iranian foreign policy?
At a military parade commemorating the 36th anniversary of the Iran-Iraq War, the chief of the Iranian armed forces spoke clearly and bluntly. Tehran holds sway over five Arab countries.
Major General Mohammed Bagheri listed them as Lebanon, Yemen, Palestine, Syria, and Iraq.
Their enemy, as Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif controversially wrote in the New York Times last month, is Wahhabism, the ultraorthodox brand of Sunni Islam propagated by Saudi Arabia.
In some of these countries, like Lebanon, Iran has a long history. In others, such as Yemen, they have only recently involved themselves. The Palestinian cause, and by extension enmity to Israel, is a cornerstone of the theocratic regime’s domestic legitimacy.
In recent years, however, it has been Syria and Iraq that have dominated global headlines and Iranian foreign policy. Damascus and Baghdad, historically the twin capitals of the Sunni Islamic caliphate, are now under the control of predominately Shia Iran – a twist not lost on large swathes of the local population.
The sectarian dimension of Iran’s involvement in Syria’s civil war is hard to ignore. Late last month, the leader of the Iraqi Shia Najbaa Movement visited Aleppo. In a propaganda video released after his visit, a song can be heard in the background with the chorus “Aleppo is Shia.”
At the time of publication, over 10,000 Shia troops are currently massing outside rebel-held east Aleppo as joint Syrian-Russian airstrikes have all but obliterated it.
Translation: “The leader of the Iraqi Shia Najbaa Movement visits the city of Aleppo”
What unites Iran’s foreign policy in all these countries, and across the decades since the 1979 Islamic revolution, is Tehran’s unwavering support for these foreign militias and non-state actors across the Middle East.
The question is: Why?
Messianism or nationalism?
A declassified CIA report, written in 1986, said that while Tehran’s support for non-state actors abroad was meant to further its national interest, it also stemmed from the belief that “it has a religious duty to export its Islamic revolution and to wage, by whatever means, a constant struggle against the perceived oppressor states.”
The messianic nature of Iran’s ruling ideology is often cited as an explanation for Iran’s support of foreign groups, with the preamble to its constitution famously committing it to “the establishment of a universal holy government and the downfall of all others.”
There has been a long-running debate over whether Iran’s support for foreign groups is rooted in national interest or in ideology.
Iranian opposition leader in exile Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini gives a speech at Roissy airport near Paris on 31 January, 1979 before boarding a plane bound to Tehran (AFP)
“I think it’s very easy to latch on to this ideological concept of exporting the revolution as a justification or explanation for Iran’s policies,” Dr Sanam Vakil, an associate fellow at Chatham House, told MEE.
“It’s more about the pragmatic element,” she said. “It’s about the national interest.”
Ellie Geranmayeh, a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, agreed: “Iran is not doing this out of an ideological zeal.”
Geranmayeh said Iran’s policy in the region has much more to do with national security policy “rather than any sort of large ambition to export revolutionary ideals across the region.”
She pointed to the fact that many of Iran’s predominately Shia citizens would not religiously associate Assad’s Alawite regime with their own religion.
Regional intervention
This has not prevented Iran from throwing the kitchen sink at the Syrian civil war to preserve its sphere of influence, even recruitingpoorer Shia from countries as far away as Côte d’Ivoire, Yemen, Afghanistan and Pakistan to fight on their behalf in Syria. This is in addition to the roles of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and its elite branch, the Quds Force.
Hezbollah was reticent to involve themselves at first. Their involvement is still a point of controversy in the movement, with former leader Subhi al-Tufayli recently slamming their “aggression” in Syria and labelling anyone fighting alongside the Russians, or Americans, as an “enemy” to God.
“Iran has nurtured and maybe even given birth to Hezbollah, but as any parent will tell you children don’t always listen to you over the course of their life,” Vakil said.
Its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, reportedly only agreed after receiving a personal appeal from Khamenei.
“Hezbollah is not necessarily a puppet of Iran as described in the media, even though a large part of the funding comes from Iran. It has a lot of domestic goals and considerations inside Lebanon which are very important for the success of the movement,” Geneive Abdo, a senior policy fellow at the Atlantic Council, told Middle East Eye.
“Neither are the Shia militias in Iraq,” she added, some of which are more loyal to the influential Iraqi Shia cleric Ali al-Sistani than to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali al-Khameini.
“It’s very complicated,” Abdo said. “At the same time that Iran or the revolutionary guards have a great influence on these forces, it doesn’t mean necessarily mean they control them 100 per cent.”
Vakil expresses a similar level of caution: “Saying that Iran is responsible for everything is demeaning on so many levels.”
“Iran has influence, it has money, but it doesn’t have total control of every situation,” she said. “It is important not to overstate Iran’s ability to manage everything. I think that there’s a lot of overstating and as a result everyone assumes that Iran is bigger than it is, more powerful and more influential than it is.
“That in effect plays into the hands of the IRGC and Qassem Soleimani and creates this sort of mythic impression around the region of what’s happening,” she added.
Relations between Hamas and Iran deteriorated sharply following the outbreak of the Syrian revolution in 2011. The following year, the group’s leadership left Damascus after being based there for more than a decade. Their funding was reduced drastically shortly thereafter.
Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal delivers a speech on 16 November, 2003 in front of a giant painting of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad during a ceremony in Beirut (AFP)
“Our position on Syria affected relations with Iran. Its support for us never stopped, but the amounts [of money] were significantly reduced,” a senior Hamas official said in 2013.
In response to this turn of events, Iran ramped up funding for other Palestinian groups, most notably the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Iran’s heightened involvement in the Middle East “began in Iraq with the US invasion and the United States’s role in creating a Shia-led government in Iraq,” according to Abdo.
“That paved the way for Iran’s involvement beginning in 2003 not only in Iraq but now we see in other Arab countries,” she said.
For example, the Quds Force have reportedly been arming the Houthis since 2012. In 2013, the Yemeni coast guard intercepted a boat full of arms, explosives, and anti-aircraft missiles suspected to have come from Iran.
In January 2014, the Bahraini authorities also intercepted a boat departing from Iraq with more than 220 pounds of explosives and other weapons such as C-4 explosives, mines and grenades.
Legacy of the Iran-Iraq war
Any analysis of Iran’s role in Iraq, and indeed the wider Middle East, must include reference to Iran’s bloody, eight-year long war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
Geranmayeh emphasised the autonomy of the local actors themselves: “Given the near and imminent fall of Baghdad in 2014, Iran offered its help to Baghdad and that help was legitimately accepted by the central government of Baghdad.”
She sees Iran’s experience in the Iran-Iraq war as crucial to Iran’s approach to foreign militias around the Middle East in general, and Iraq in particular: “The (Iranian) military was weakened during the eight-year war with Saddam Hussein and so a kind of more voluntarily, locally organised Basij paramilitary force emerged in Iran. A lot of people who are in the Iranian military have that experience themselves of the Iran-Iraq war of how to mobilise local operations into a security architecture in times of need and in times where there is essentially a security vacuum in place. So they have certainly transported some of that know-how into Iraq.”
Iraqi soldiers walk after their victory in the battle at al-Howeizah swamps, north of Basra, on 22 March, 1985 (AFP)
She says that a similar dynamic is at play in Syria and the pro-government National Defence Forces (NDF): “What they (Iran) would say with the NDF is that they are in Syria with the legitimately recognised, UN-recognised government of Syria, the Assad regime, having blessed their cooperation in the Syrian sphere. They would see their role as advisory on the ground to local groups fighting at a time essentially when there is a security vacuum.”
“The IRGC has always played a critical role in Iran’s foreign policy,” Geranmayeh continued. “They have a long history, [with] a lot of these people of course fighting in the Iran-Iraq war, they understand the neighbouring countries very well because they spent a lot of time in those countries.”
“They (the IRGC) are most well-known for their defence of Iran during the Iran-Iraq war and the translation of that defence into supporting non-state actors in other countries throughout the world and in the Middle East itself; Hezbollah being their baby, they have created it,” Vakil said. “It’s the same sort of concept in Syria, they are responsible for the Syria portfolio, and they are responsible for any of the other portfolios around the region.”
The rise of the fiercely anti-Shia Islamic State group has increased the IRGC’s domestic popularity in recent years, Geranmayeh claims: “The IRGC is viewed much more now as a security apparatus that is protecting Iran from being contaminated by ISIS fighters… in Syria, for example, the choice is seen as one between Assad or ISIS.”
Abdo emphasised that the IRGC are an “an economic force, they’re a political force, and they’re an ideological force.”
“We have to be specific, it’s the revolutionary guards who are controlling and funding the militias,” she said.
Follow the money
Iran is one of only three countries considered an official state sponsor of terror by the US; it was added to the State Department’s list on 19 January, 1984. The only other countries listed are Sudan and Syria.
The US foreign ministry’s 2013 Country Reports on Terrorism stated that Iran supports non-state actors in Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain and Iraq.
“I think that an opportunity has been opened for Iran in the Arab world,” Abdo said. “For many decades, Iran didn’t have the opportunity that it has now in the Arab world… It’s a result of the post-Arab uprising era.”
Naame Shaam, an independent campaign group focused on Iran’s role in Syria, published a report in December 2015 in which they estimated the level of support Iran provided non-state actors across the region.
This is a difficult task to say the least, according to Vakil.
A picture taken on 11 April, 2011 shows Iran’s biggest denomination currencies in Tehran (AFP)
“The key is that we just don’t know what those figures are, they’re estimates and guestimates from different sources and outlets,” she said. “The accurate reflection of Iran’s investment in Syria is a big question ultimately. We know it’s a lot but we just don’t know how much it is. And because they’ve invested a lot obviously it’s a clear indication that this strategy means something for them and they have some sort of long-term plan. But, again, there is a lot of opacity as to what that could be.”
With this in mind, Naame Shaam – comprised of Iranian, Syrian, and Lebanese activists and journalists – used publicly available data to make the following estimates:
Lebanon: From the 1980s to the beginning of the Arab Spring, Hezbollah received between $100m and $200m annually from Iran. Domestic economic decline and the increasing intervention in Syria led to this number between being cut to around $50m to $100m per year from 2010 onwards.
Iraq: From the 2003 invasion of Iraq until the end of Bush’s presidency, Iran provided a range of Iraqi Shia militias with $10m to $35m a year, a number which skyrocketed after 2009 to $100m to $200m a year.
Palestine: From its consolidation of power in 2007 to the start of the Arab Spring in Syria and elsewhere in 2011, Hamas received approximately $100m to $250m per year from Iran. Hamas’s refusal to back Assad led to a dramatic decline in funding.
Yemen: The Houthis have received anywhere between $10m and $25m a year since 2010.
Syria: Assad government forces and its allied militias received between $15bn and $25bn over the first five years of the conflict, amounting to between $3bn and $5bn per year.
Overall: Naame Sham estimated that over the period of time mentioned above, Iranian expenditure on foreign militias and non-state actors ranges between a low estimate of $20 billion – and a high estimate of $80 billion.
The money comes partly from public budgets, but largely from the huge sums of money under the direct control of the supreme leader and the IRGC. These funds come from clandestine business networks pumping out billions of dollars of revenue, and are untraceable as they are not accountable to the public, according to Naame Shaam.
History and consistency
Iranian Defence Minister Hossein Dehghan (L) attends the 5th Moscow Conference on International Security (MCIS) in Moscow on 27 April, 2016 (AFP)
Iran’s defence minister is Hossein Dehghan – a former militia commander who orchestrated the bombing of a US Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, an attack that killed 241 American troops. This was the deadliest terrorist attack in US history before 9/11. Fifty-eight French soldiers were also killed in the same operation on a French military barracks.
The following year saw Hezbollah’s abduction of CIA station chief William Francis Buckley, who was tortured and executed.
In 1992, the Israeli embassy in Argentina was bombed, killing 29 people. Two years later a Jewish cultural centre was bombed in Buenos Aires, killing 85 people.
Iran and its Lebanese proxies were linked to both attacks. Argentina ordered the arrest of infamous Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyah for his participation in the 1992 attack, as well as Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior adviser to Khamenei, for orchestrating the latter attack.
In 1996, a further 19 US soldiers were killed by an Iran-backed group, this time in Saudi Arabia as a result of the Khobar Towers bombing. Ahmed al-Mughassil, the suspected mastermind of the attack, was arrested last year in Beirut, having lived under Hezbollah’s protection since the attack.
Iran’s reach is not limited to the Arab world either. Its Shia majority, but staunchly secular, neighbour Azerbaijan has also felt the long reach of Tehran’s arm.
In 2006, Baku arrested 15 of its citizens with links to Iran and Hezbollah, who were planning a wave of attacks against Israeli and Western visitors in the country.
Two years later, Azerbaijan foiled a joint Iran-Hezbollah plan to bomb the country’s Israeli embassy in revenge for the 2008 assassination of Mughniyah.
In 2012, Baku carried out another wave of arrests to prevent another planned bombing campaign, again found to be linked to Iran and Hezbollah.
The same year saw five Israelis killed in Bulgaria in an attack that Sofia said had “obvious links” to Hezbollah.
In his 2014 testimony to the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Dr Matthew Levitt of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy said the Quds Force’s increase in activities goes back to Hezbollah’s repeated failures to avenge the assassination of Mughniyah in Azerbaijan and elsewhere, leading to growing frustration within IRGC ranks.
“The IRGC would no longer rely solely on Hezbollah to carry out terrorist attacks abroad,” he told the committee. “It would now deploy Quds Force operatives to do so on their own, not just as logisticians supporting Hezbollah hit men.”
Handout mugshot obtained 12 October, 2011 courtesy of the Nueces County, Texas sheriff’s Office shows Manssor Arbabsiar (AFP PHOTO/NUECES COUNTY SHERIFF)
For these reasons, the State Department reported in 2012 “a marked resurgence of Iran’s state sponsorship of terrorism, through its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force (IRGC-QF), its Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), and Tehran’s ally Hezbollah. Iran and Hezbollah’s terrorist activity has reached a tempo unseen since the 1990s.”
The previous year, Iran even tried to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Adel al-Jubeir, in the nation’s capital Washington, D.C.
Manssor Arbabsiar, an Iranian-American citizen, pleaded guilty to the plot in June 2013 and admitted to “conspiring with members of the Iranian military in the formulation of the plot,” CNN reported at the time.
Iran vehemently denied involvement, but the plot was allegedly foiled when Arbabsiar’s contact in the Mexican drug cartel he tried to recruit to carry out the assassination turned out to be an undercover US agent.
Al-Qaeda connections
Iranian tensions with America only heightened after the 11 September attacks in 2001.
As the executive and legislative branches in America struggled over whether to allow families of 9/11 victims to sue Saudi Arabia, Iran’s role has also been a point of controversy.
Iran quickly condemned the terrorist attack, but the 9/11 Commission Report, published three years after the attack, found that eight of the 10 hijackers travelled through Iran between late 2000 and early 2001.
They were taking advantage of an agreement with the Iranian government that meant the passports of al-Qaeda members were not stamped as they passed through the country.
In a similar vein, a leading figure of al-Qaeda in Iraq – Abu Musab al-Zarqawi – was given shelter in Iran in 2001 and 2002, with Tehran reportedly refusing to extradite him to Jordan. The links are said to have continued and in 2012, the US Department of the Treasury slammed the Iran’s main intelligence organisation, the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), for its “support to terrorist groups, such as al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda in Iraq… again exposing the extent of Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism as a matter of Iran’s state policy.”
A US soldier stands between two images of al-Qaeda leader in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi during a US military briefing 8 June, 2006 in Baghdad (AFP)
In July, the US Treasury imposed sanctions on three senior al-Qaeda members – all of whom are located in Iran. Faisal al-Khalidi is a former al-Qaeda commander and plays a leading role in weapons acquisition, while veteran member Yisra Bayumi served as a mediator with Iranian authorities as early as 2015 and facilitated the transfer of al-Qaeda funds, and Abu Bakr Ghumayn in 2015 assumed control of the financing and organisation of al-Qaeda members in Iran.
With regards to Iran sheltering al-Qaeda members, Vakil said Tehran was “perhaps using them as bargaining chips.”
“There is very limited love between Iran and al-Qaeda, they have no ideological symmetry in just about anything,” she said. “If they are doing anything, it is quite a pragmatic effort trying to get something out of it and that is what this regime is known for.”
Rouhani and the regime
Hassan Rouhani has often been portrayed as a moderate, at least in comparison to his hard-line predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. His focus is said to be on rebuilding Iran’s shattered economy and normalising relations with the West.
Experts agree, however, that his impact on foreign policy has been minimal.
“It’s very difficult for one person alone to fundamentally redirect and rearrange regional policy without a consensus being formed at top leadership level,” Geranmayeh said.
Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani (C) leaves after addressing the 71st session of the United Nations General Assembly at the UN headquarters in New York on 22 September, 2016 (AFP)
Vakil agrees: “Rouhani doesn’t actually have that much control and influence over Iran’s foreign policy portfolio.”
“One would assume the president is in charge of these things, but in fact he’s not,” she added. “The purview of foreign policy is primarily in the hands of the supreme leader.”
“I think his impact has been minimal,” Abdo said of Rouhani and Iran’s foreign policy. “I think that he has been used as an instrument in the similar way that Mohammed Khatami was used an instrument to achieve a certain regime objective. In Rouhani’s case it was the nuclear deal, in Khatami’s case, it was to try to improve relations with the West.”
Through this prism, the nuclear deal was not “necessarily a Rouhani victory,” she said, but what the supreme leader authorised.
Nuclear deal
In 2006, then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said: “Iran has been the country that has been in many ways a kind of central banker for terrorism in important regions.”
A decade later, Obama’s nuclear deal meant Iran received more than $100bn in sanctions relief as well as reintegration into the pivotal SWIFT international banking system. Rouhani has also made a number of visits to the West to increase economic ties.
The lifting of financial sanctions is a contentious issue, so much so that when the Obama administration sent $400m in cash to Iran last month, he kept his own military out of the loop.
“There was a lot of opposition to the lifting of sanctions on Iran, particularly in the US, based on the argument that the money is going to be funnelled to fund Iran’s regional policies that are essentially opposed to Western interests,” Geranmayeh said of opponents of the nuclear deal.
This was certainly the position of Naame Shaam, who wrote in the conclusion to their report that: “There have been fears that, next to domestic investment needs, part of the released funds could end up fuelling conflicts in the Middle East even further due to increased military spending and financial backing of allied militias and governments like the Assad regime in Syria.
“The increase in Iran’s 2015/16 current defence budget may be a first sign of this,” it continued. “In recent months, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Iranian Minister of Defence, Hossein Dehqan, both made it clear that they had no intention to cut their support to Hezbollah, Hamas, the (Palestinian) Islamic Jihad, the Houthi militias in Yemen, the Syrian and Iraqi governments and their militias, despite a nuclear deal.”
Iranian Foreign Minister Muhammad Javad Zarif addresses the parliament in Tehran on 2 October, 2016 (AFP)
Geranmayeh takes a different view, however: “The majority of the money is going to fund local investment projects to reduce unemployment, to promote job growth, and to tackle issues to do with inflation.”
Vakil agrees: “The country does need the money internally because if Iran is going to hit all of its growth markers for the next 10 years there has to be a lot of investment in the Iranian economy. For the Iranian regime that is a huge part of why it signed the nuclear deal. It wasn’t about anything else except the economy, and trying to get the economy going, and trying to generate foreign and internal investment into different sections of the Iranian economy. It’s about the long-term sustainability of the Islamic republic.”
The consensus is far from unanimous though.
“I think the money will be directed toward non-state actors abroad,” Abdo said. “I think that it’s very unfortunate, but I think that the regime’s strategy is that they will basically maintain the minimum economic commitment required to prevent dissent and uprising, and as long as they can maintain this low level of service to their own people – which means that the subsidies are cut and the value of the currency is low and so forth – they will continue to do this if this means freeing up resources for regional domination.”
“It’s very clear if you go to Iran, the wages are low, the economy is in a bad situation,” she said. “But they’re spending enormous amounts of money on their regional ambitions.”
Sectarianism and survival
Iran supports non-state actors in the Middle East “because they want to have a foothold politically in the Arab world,” Abdo said.
“I think also there is a religious dimension to this and many people disagree with me,” she said. The topic is one she discusses at greater length in her new book, The New Sectarianism, due to be published on 1 December 2016.
“If you go back and look at Khamenei’s speeches during the early years of the Arab uprising, he talked a lot about the Islamic awakening. This is just pure rhetoric,” she said. “In fact what has happened is that the Iranians are supporting Shia groups in the Arab world.”
“Nasrallah has made very clear over the last two years that Hezbollah now functions as a Shia militia,” Abdo said. “Both Iran and Hezbollah never played the Shia card, they never said that they are the military force for Shia in the region, but they departed from that approximately two years ago and now there is no question that both Hezbollah and Iran are military forces to support Shia in the region.”
“This is what I think is very important in what has changed their historic rhetoric since the revolution,” she said.
There is an ethnic, as well as a religious, dimension to the complexity of Iran’s support for foreign militias, Abdo continued, because these groups are comprised mainly of Arab, not Persian, Shia.
“The Iranians are making inroads because the Shia in many of these countries are not gaining any support from their own governments,” she said. “Iraq is a perfect example of this.”
Zarif’s article in the New York Times has refocused attention on this sectarian proxy war currently raging across the Middle East.
“No doubt the Saudis are definitely instrumental in driving this conflict, but I think the important difference is that ideologically the Saudis don’t need this conflict for their survival,” she says. “The Iranian state depends upon conflict with the West ideologically and conflict with its neighbours to maintain its survival and its legitimacy.”
