by Jim Lobe
New York — On his second trip to the UN General Assembly as Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani Tuesday said he looked forward to better relations with regional rival Saudi Arabia and only tepidly criticized the US attack on Islamic State (ISIL or ISIS) and Khorasan targets in Syria.
Speaking at a press breakfast with about two dozen media representatives, Rouhani expressed hope that the P5+1 (US, UK, France, Russia, China plus Germany) and Tehran will conclude a comprehensive agreement on Iran’s nuclear program by the current Nov. 24 deadline but noted that differences remain and that this week’s series of meetings in New York are likely to be critical.
Failure to reach an agreement, he said, will not necessarily result in a rapid uptick in tensions between Washington and Tehran.
“If there [is] no final agreement, there will perhaps be another way to go,” he said.
“For now, everything is based, God willing, on reaching an accord. [But failure to meet the deadline] doesn’t mean we will go back to the way things were before.”
He also suggested that the Obama administration should accept Iran’s role as a regional leader in the fight against ISIS, stressing that, while Washington justified its initial military reaction to the Sunni group’s sweep last month across much of central and northern Iraq largely in terms of protecting US personnel and property, Iran was already taking action to bolster anti-ISIS forces on the ground.
“Americans are very aware that the country that prevented the [Baghdad] government from falling was Iran,” he said. “Iran’s role has been undeniable.”
“Countries in the region are much more qualified to lead [the anti-ISIS] efforts than those who are outside and don’t know the region as well,” he said through a translator.
Tuesday’s breakfast marked the first of a series of events featuring Rouhani, who will address the UN General Assembly Wednesday morning and hold a more general press conference Friday. It came amidst intensified diplomacy between the P5+1 and Iran, which included a meeting lasting more than one hour between Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif, who had already arrived in New York last week, Monday.
The breakfast, in which Rouhani answered questions in Farsi, also came in the immediate aftermath of the Pentagon’s confirmation that it had attacked targets of Khorasan, an al-Qaeda offshoot that Washington claims is actively planning and preparing attacks against western states, including the US, inside Syria.
Khorasan is not known to have links with ISIS, whose recent military successes in both Syria and Iraq prompted Obama’s decision to dispatch some 1,600 US trainers and advisers to Iraq and to authorize air strikes against ISIS forces in both countries.
US Anti-ISIS Campaign
Rouhani did not explicitly address Khorasan during the breakfast, focusing instead on ISIS, as well as other groups he referred to as “terrorist.”
As to the US air strikes in Syrian territory, Rouhani questioned their legality but did not explicitly denounce them. He stressed, however, that any military action within a country’s borders should either be authorized by the UN Security Council or by the country whose territory is subject to attack. “[It’s not] legal, particularly without the authority of the government,” he said.
“…Everything that does take place must take place within the legal framework,” he said later in reference to US counter-terrorist actions in Iraq and Syria, and possible coordination between Tehran and Washington in that effort.
Perhaps his most significant remarks, however, came in response to a question about relations between Iran and its regional rival, Saudi Arabia. It came in the wake of a meeting Monday between Zarif and Riyadh’s foreign minister, Prince Saudi al-Faisal in which the latter reportedly invited Zarif to visit the kingdom.
Many observers have commented recently that any effort to isolate and defeat ISIS and eventually reach a political settlement to the civil war in Syria will require understandings worked out between Tehran and Riyadh.
“Saudi Arabia is an important country in our region, and we believe that the relationships between [Iran and the Gulf] countries must be very dignified and very strong,” Rouhani said. “Our relationship with Saudi Arabia is not within the level that our people expect. I believe relations deserve to be warmer.”
He went on to say that he believed Riyadh was moving “closer and closer with us” as a result of a conditions in the region, an apparent reference to ISIS’s advances. “Within the next few months, I believe our relations will grow warmer,” he added.
Rouhani also repeatedly stated that Iran’s role as a leader in the anti-ISIS fight should be given more recognition, noting that he had spoken at length about the dangers posed by “extremism and violence” in his speech to the General Assembly a year ago.
“Perhaps this [ISIS] threat and danger were not crystal clear when I spoke,” he observed.
And he questioned Washington’s claim to leading the international fight against ISIS. “Can countries [carry out this effort] without cooperation and coordination and succeed,” he asked.
“Is a coalition needed? If so, who is best suited to lead? …Is it possible [to defeat extremism] without [addressing root causes and] without knowing the region very well?” he asked rhetorically.
“Countries in the region are much more qualified to lead…,” he said.
“The Americans are free (to make their own) judgment, but people are aware that the strongest government that has taken the strongest fight against terrorism has been Iran,” he said.
Without citing the United States by name, Rouhani also implicitly criticized Washington’s strategy in Syria, noting that it was not “easily digestible” for Iranians to accept the leadership of countries which had supported anti-Assad insurgent groups, some of which have been associated with ISIS or Jabhat al-Nusra, an al-Qaeda affiliate.
He also complained that “a country” that says it wants to fight against a terrorist group but, at the same time, forms, arms and trains an anti-government group in a third country (a reference to Saudi Arabia) and then sends them back in hopes it will fight the terrorist group was “nebulous and ambiguous at best” and constituted a “very confusing behavior and policy.”
Nuclear Talks
On the nuclear negotiations, Rouhani broke no new ground but suggested that current differences between the P5+1 and Iran went beyond the size and scope of Tehran’s uranium enrichment program and included the timeframe of any comprehensive agreement and the lifting of sanctions as well as what changes will be made to the Arak reactor.
“This week will clarify many things as to whether we will reach an agreement in two months,” he said, adding that both sides agree that the “continuation of the current agreement doesn’t benefit anyone.”
If an agreement is indeed reached, relations between Iran and the US will be “completely different” and will constitute a “win-win for all sides,” he said, noting that he and President Obama had spoken “in depth about a number of issues of co-operation” once the nuclear issue had been resolved during their ground-breaking phone conversation one year ago, as Rouhani was being driven to the JFK airport after the General Assembly.
Rouhani also acknowledged that there was domestic opposition to an agreement and rapprochement between the US and Iran, noting that various sectors in both countries had opposed the Joint Plan of Action (JPOA) reached in November last year. “But after the dust settled,” he noted, Iranians “…saw only roses, not thorns, on the path.”
Detained Washington Post Reporter
A number of attendees at the breakfast raised the plight of Washington Post correspondent Jason Rezaian and his wife who have been detained in Iran for more than two months without formal charges.
Rouhani insisted that the case was in the hands of the judiciary and that he hoped it would be resolved very soon.
“The judiciary has not yet made a determination,” he said.
Asked whether their detention may have been designed to sabotage the P5+1 talks and weaken his government, Rouhani said he didn’t think the action was “premeditated” (the translator said “pre-programmed”) with that intent, although his answer fell short of a categorical rejection of that notion.
Follow LobeLog on Twitter and like us on Facebook
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani arrives in New York on Sept. 22, 2014 ahead of his address to the United Nations General Assembly
by Thomas W. Lippman
An Arabic-speaking friend who has been doing business in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf for decades and seems to know everyone there invited me to lunch the other day. He wanted to know if I could make sense of developments in Saudi Arabia over the past six months.
[...]]]>by Thomas W. Lippman
An Arabic-speaking friend who has been doing business in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf for decades and seems to know everyone there invited me to lunch the other day. He wanted to know if I could make sense of developments in Saudi Arabia over the past six months.
I almost laughed — he knows more before he gets out of bed in the morning than I ever will. But it was a measure of the collective bafflement of people whose business it is to know what is going on in the kingdom that my friend turned to me. His was the sixth such request I had fielded recently. The others were from diplomats at two foreign embassies, representatives of an international industrial conglomerate and a giant oil company, and an Obama administration official who has access to classified material.
It was flattering to be sought out by such people, who normally would be sources for me rather than the other way around. I would have liked to help them if I knew the answers, but the conversation was not reassuring. All this highlights how much Saudi Arabia, traditionally cautious and understated, has thrown knowledgeable people into confusion by its actions and decisions over the past several months. It is no secret that the leaders of Saudi Arabia have been upset with the United States over several policy differences in the past year; it’s less clear if the Saudi leaders understand how difficult it has become for their friends outside the kingdom to discern where they want to go and how they plan to get there.
The fundamental objectives of Saudi strategic policy are well known: contain Iran, put an end to the Assad regime in Syria, stamp out the Muslim Brotherhood, fight Islamic extremism, forge coherence out of the squabbles within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and encourage the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel. What’s harder to discern is how the kingdom’s actions and decisions over the past six months have advanced this agenda.
This period of turbulence seems to have begun with the decision last November to reject the seat on the United Nations Security Council that the kingdom had sought for years. The Saudis said the U.N. had failed in its duty to stop the carnage of Syria’s civil war and to bring about a negotiated settlement between the Palestinians and Israel. It is true that those conflicts remain unresolved, but it was and is hard to see how Saudi Arabia’s decision made any difference. The Syrian war had been going on for some time, and the plight of the Palestinians dates to 1948; were the Saudis unaware of that while they were avidly pursuing the seat they rejected?
In the months since then, Saudi-watchers have been confronted with one surprising development after another. These include, in no particular order:
This list is not complete, but it is instructive. People outside Saudi Arabia who try to follow the kingdom’s affairs, and I include myself among them, should remind ourselves at all times how little we really know. This is not a country where the king and senior princes have to explain themselves, and they usually don’t. Even when they do, their explanations may or may not be the whole truth. It’s not as if a committee of the legislature could subpoena them. What all these pieces add up to may become clear over time — or maybe not. Meanwhile we should be wary of drawing conclusions.
]]>by Adnan Tabatabai
Several developments and incidents in the past three decades have led to a deep rift between Tehran and Riyadh. This rivalry has mounted into antagonism. Today, the possible breakthrough in the decade-long dispute over Iran’s nuclear program has caused anxiety in the Saudi kingdom.
Observers and experts alike maintain that [...]]]>
by Adnan Tabatabai
Several developments and incidents in the past three decades have led to a deep rift between Tehran and Riyadh. This rivalry has mounted into antagonism. Today, the possible breakthrough in the decade-long dispute over Iran’s nuclear program has caused anxiety in the Saudi kingdom.
Observers and experts alike maintain that a comprehensive nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1 (the US, Britain, France, China, and Russia plus Germany) — and US-Iran rapprochement in particular — would critically undermine Saudi Arabia’s interests. But this conventional wisdom overlooks important recent developments.
Iran now capable of bold diplomacy
The new administration in Tehran is both willing and able to adopt bold steps in foreign relations. While the self-perception of being a or the regional power is as well-defined now as it was under former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a new approach is now in place. The strategy is no longer to confront, provoke and humiliate competitors and to proclaim strength through isolation, but to seek cooperation through a reconciliatory approach leading to the creation of “win-win solutions,” to use the language of President Hassan Rouhani.
This political mindset is being promoted by Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. His foreign policy approach is based on both a strong popular mandate as well as the backing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Indeed, whenever Zarif’s critics at home have become too outspoken, Khamenei has supported Iran’s nuclear negotiating team, calling them, for example, “soldiers of the revolution”. This enables the Rouhani government to define ambitious foreign policy goals.
Saudi Arabia in a state of weakness
In contrast to Iran’s relative stability following the exit of Ahmadinejad, the Saudi ruling elite is going through a critical evolutionary process and is, therefore, situated in a state of confusion and weakness. The urgent question of succession has already led King Abdullah to circumvent the prerogative of the 34-membered Allegiance Council and designate the 68-year-old Prince Muqrin bin Abdelaziz as deputy crown prince and possible future king. Yet some doubt whether Muqrin is capable of steering the kingdom through the challenges ahead.
The removal of Prince Bandar bin Sultan as intelligence chief has been of similar significance. Iranian officials welcomed this move and read it as a sign of failed Saudi strategies particularly in Syria. With Prince Mohammed Nayef taking over the Syrian file, a possible shift in Saudi Arabia’s Syria policy seems possible. Recent reports of Saudi-US cooperation to provide advanced anti-tank missiles to Syrian rebels, however, show that this possible shift may still divert significantly from Tehran’s position.
The kingdom will nevertheless have to pinpoint its alliances. The current rift with Qatar may indicate disintegrative processes in the Gulf. Former Assistant Secretary General for the Shura Council in Oman, Ahmad Ali M. al-Mukhaini, has been supportive of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) seeking multi-level arrangements with Iran. He has even written: “We need to have a counterweight to Saudi Arabia along commercial, energy and security lines. Would this be a role for Iran? The answer is yes.”
Furthermore, the Arab Youth Survey 2014 has shown that the population of the Gulf sees regional neighbours as their biggest allies. Even polls from 2011, when the provocative Ahmadinejad was still president, also show that despite anti-Iran rhetoric by Gulf monarchy leaders, Iran came third (18%) by a large margin after Israel (71%) and the US (59%) when respondents were asked which country poses the biggest threat to regional stability. The Saudi kingdom might, therefore, be aware of the dangers of solely relying on its Western allies or exploring cooperation with Israel. In short, seeking cooperation with Iran may, after all, be less costly.
Iran’s track record of good relations
Many of President Hassan Rouhani’s cabinet members were ministers, deputies or advisors during the presidencies of Ali-Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani (1989-97) and Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005). Throughout those years, and particularly the 90s, Iran-Saudi relations improved before reaching a new low under Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005-13).
Iran’s Islamic revolution of 1979 and its expansionist ambitions caused grave concern in the Gulf region over the threat of possible Shia uprisings. The revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini angered the Saudis by calling monarchies “un-Islamic” governments. Saudi Arabia’s desire to counter and contain revolutionary Iran also resulted in Saudi support for Saddam Hussein during the 1980-88 Iraq-Iran war.
After a decade of open hostility, tensions cooled down during the presidencies of Rafsanjani and Khatami. Strategic and economic cooperation took shape, some of which even lasted until the early years of Ahmadinejad. But the latter’s increasingly radical rhetoric, his close ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRCG), and Iran’s growing influence particularly in Iraq and Lebanon through the IRGC infuriated the Saudi kingdom, even to a point of supporting military action against Iran to halt its nuclear program.
For months, there has been talk of an Iranian high-rank delegation visit to Saudi Arabia, but it has not yet happened. Meanwhile at numerous speeches and interviews, Zarif has stressed the need to “build networks, not blocs” to tackle the many challenges the region faces. He has also repeatedly reached out to Riyadh.
An Iran-Saudi rapprochement would immediately ease the proxification of the many fragile contexts of the region ranging from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan to Bahrain, Yemen, Lebanon and Pakistan. The respective strategic interests must be settled; the rhetoric that accentuates the sectarian divide — a discourse that has created dangerous realities on the ground in terms of identity politics particularly in Iraq and Syria – must be halted.
Saudi Arabia’s opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood, the recent decree by the King to criminalize “home-made” jihadists who fight in Syria, and tensions with Qatar regarding these issues indicate the the kingdom is trying to come to terms with Sunni extremism beyond its control. Rapprochement with Iran would, at least, minimize the dangers coming from the Shia fronts and, potentially, even lead to joint efforts to tame militant jihadist forces.
How the US can help
It’s time to convey the idea that Middle East powers must shape the future of their own neighbourhood — an idea that was chanted by protesters throughout the region during the wave of Arab uprisings that began in 2011. A gradual withdrawal of the US presence would encourage and strengthen a sense of ownership and shared responsibilities.
Asked about the major objective for the US to support Iran-Saudi rapprochement, Gary Sick, who served as an Iran specialist on the National Security Council staff under Presidents Ford, Carter, and Reagan told LobeLog: “Ideally, what the United States would want — and what every other responsible power with interests in the region should want — is for both of these key players to focus their efforts on resolving regional disputes.”
“That means that Iran needs to visibly temper its involvement with proxy forces and to actively seek rapprochement with the GCC states. Similarly, Saudi Arabia needs to turn away from its recent excursions into self-defeating and even irrational policies and return to the more cautious and pragmatic policies that have served it so well since its inception,” said Sick, now a professor at Columbia University in New York.
“Admittedly, that is asking a lot, and I doubt that it will happen overnight. Still, it describes approximately the strategic relationships that existed in the Persian Gulf in the mid-1970s and again in the early 1990s,” he said.
In order to minimize Saudi scepticism, “the United States and its allies need to bring Saudi Arabia more into the actual decision-making process on regional affairs while providing constant and persuasive reassurance of sensitivity to Saudi interests,” he said.
Considering the regional policies of the Rouhani government, it is plausible to assume that any opening signals from Riyadh will be echoed in Tehran.
– Adnan Tabatabai is a Berlin-based political analyst on Iran affairs and a PhD candidate at the University of Duisburg-Essen
Photo: Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (R) meets with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah ibn Abdel Aziz, 09 December in Tehran, on the sidelines of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) summit. Credit:AFP/Getty Images
]]>Shortly after President Obama’s startling telephone conversation with Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, a Saudi Arabian journalist wrote that “The phone call between Obama and Rouhani shocked the Gulf states, Jordan, Turkey, Israel, and other countries.” No matter which president initiated the call, he wrote, “What is important to know is what stands [...]]]>
Shortly after President Obama’s startling telephone conversation with Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, a Saudi Arabian journalist wrote that “The phone call between Obama and Rouhani shocked the Gulf states, Jordan, Turkey, Israel, and other countries.” No matter which president initiated the call, he wrote, “What is important to know is what stands behind the conversation and how deep the ties are between America and Iran.”
Never mind that there are no “ties” between Washington and Tehran, let alone “deep” ones. His article reflected concern among Saudis that the United States might negotiate some wide-ranging settlement of its issues with Iran and that any such deal would automatically be detrimental to Saudi interests.
Such anxiety has surfaced in Riyadh many times over the past two decades, dating to Madeleine Albright’s unsuccessful efforts to reach out to Iran when she was secretary of state in Bill Clinton’s second term. No doubt many prominent Saudis share the journalist’s sentiment, not just in the ruling family but in the Sunni religious establishment. In their short-sighted view, regional security is a zero-sum game: if it benefits Iran, it must be bad for Saudi Arabia. To this group, as the authors of a major RAND Corp. study noted in 2009, “the prospect of U.S.-Iranian rapprochement (or even near-term coordination on Iraq) would appear to jeopardize the privileged position Riyadh has long enjoyed in Gulf affairs.”
Since that study appeared, Saudi antipathy to Iran has only increased. Iran’s growing influence in Iraq, its all-out support for the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria and for Hezbollah in Lebanon, and its perceived instigation of civil unrest in Bahrain have exacerbated Saudi anxieties and reinforced the kingdom’s determination to keep Iran isolated and economically constrained. At the same time, the Saudi perception that the United States abandoned Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, a longtime ally, and might do the same to them if regional circumstances changed, has led some Saudis to doubt the long-term reliability of the United States as anchor of the kingdom’s security. Their doubts were not alleviated when panelists at a Gulf security conference in Washington earlier this year projected a reversal of the regional alignment over the coming decade, with Iran emerging as more friendly to the United States and Saudi Arabia less so.
The Saudis have also been peeved about the inability of the United States to deliver on its commitment to a two-state solution that would end the Arab-Israeli conflict. That diplomatic stalemate has allowed Iran, which refuses to acknowledge Israel’s existence and openly supports Hezbollah, to present itself to the Arab world as the true champion of justice for the Palestinians, as opposed to the Saudis, who have offered a comprehensive plan for peace with Israel.
Furthermore, the Saudis went all-in to try to engineer the ouster of Assad, believing that they were in tune with U.S. policy. Now they may be feeling exposed as the United States and Russia appear to be pursuing a different course.
And it is certainly true that many of Saudi Arabia’s leading officials, including some diplomats in the foreign ministry, harbor a deep loathing for, and suspicion of, all things Shia. A softer U.S. line on Iran would not make those Saudis more comfortable in the bilateral relationship.
Moreover, the Rouhani initiative, assuming it is genuine rather than cosmetic, coincides with a growing realization in Saudi Arabia that the United States is becoming steadily less dependent on Gulf oil. Could the Obama administration’s announced shift of strategic resources to Asia presage a reduction of U.S. commitments in the Gulf? Senior U.S. officials say no: Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said a few months ago that “You can take it to the bank” that the U.S. will maintain its posture in the Gulf for the foreseeable future.
Thus, recent reports of anxiety in Riyadh about a possible shift in relations between Washington and Tehran were predictable, and may well have some basis in fact.
But there are also Saudis who understand that a better relationship between Washington and Tehran might actually benefit the kingdom. After all, the two countries shared a strategic alignment with the United States before the Iranian revolution. In that era, Iran was far more powerful than Saudi Arabia militarily and economically, but the Saudis did not perceive it as a strategic threat, partly because it was influenced by the United States and partly because Saddam Hussein’s Iraq provided a protective buffer — a buffer that the United States dismantled with its invasion of Iraq a decade ago.
Even during the past decade, when tensions were high over Lebanon, Bahrain, Iraq and other issues, the Saudis and Iranians found ways to work cooperatively when it was in the interests of both countries. “Such calculations often take place independently of U.S. pressure or encouragement,” the RAND report noted, adding that in past times of tension with Washington the Saudis have been more flexible, rather than less so, in their regional rivalries.
“With the ‘moderation’ discourse strengthened during the presidency of recently elected Hassan Rouhani, pragmatism will be enhanced in Iran’s regional policy,” the columnist Kayhan Barzegar, an experienced analyst of Gulf affairs, predicted in the online magazine al-Monitor after Rouhani was inaugurated. “This development will weaken the existing ‘mutual threat’ perception between Iran and Saudi Arabia that is rooted primarily in the policies of both countries in response to regional issues. Such a development will also consequently strengthen relations between the two. Iran and Saudi Arabia are not interested in an intensification of sectarian or geostrategic regional rivalries. They are well aware that such rivalries will eventually be instrumentalized and used politically, draining energy from both sides. The result will be increased instability and growth of extremist trends in their backyard. Conflict between the two also provides an opportunity for other rival actors, such as Turkey and Qatar, to play an active role in regional issues at their expense, such as happened with the Syrian crisis, which is not currently welcomed by the Iranians or the Saudis.”
In fact, there are several ways in which a lessening of tensions between Iran and the United States could actually benefit Saudi Arabia. To achieve some form of rapprochement with the United States now, Iran would be required to forgo definitively any attempt to build or acquire nuclear weapons — a development that could hardly be depicted as detrimental to Saudi interests. The United States would also press Iran to curtail the aggressive policies that have destabilized the region for years. If Iran’s leaders truly want relief from international economic sanctions, they will have to persuade the countries that imposed them that they will be good neighbors to Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the smaller Gulf states. Would that not assuage some of the security concerns that have prompted Saudi Arabia to spend tens of billions of dollars on new U.S. weapons?
If Iran were to curtail its support for Hezbollah in order to improve relations with Washington and the West, it might forfeit its position as “more Arab than the Arabs” on the issue of Israel, another development that could be to Saudi Arabia’s advantage.
And Saudi Arabia’s Gulf neighbors such as Qatar might no longer feel the need to hedge their bets by keeping some distance between themselves and Saudi Arabia and maintaining correct relations with Iran, thus facilitating Saudi Arabia’s desire to exert the regional leadership to which it feels entitled.
On a visit to South Asia when she was secretary of state, Albright chided the Pakistanis for opposing a U.S. initiative to expand economic ties with India. The initiative was not aimed at undermining Pakistan, she said, and might actually be helpful if an expanding Indian economy brought greater cross-border trade.
The Pakistanis didn’t buy it, but that did not diminish the validity of her message. It might be useful now for Obama and Secretary of State John F. Kerry to explain to the Saudis that any deal with Iran will be a long time in the making and will not damage U.S. ties with Riyadh unless the Saudis want it that way.
– Thomas W. Lippman is an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute and author of Saudi Arabia on the Edge.