I’m Sanctioned By Iran For Defending LGBTQ - Ex-US Envoy Says

Campaigners against the 800-trillion-rial ($3 billion) scheme posted videos on social media Tuesday evening claiming to show welding for fencing and other preparations for building the Miankaleh petrochemical plant continuing during hours of darkness after the Supreme Court ordered Tuesday a halt in construction pending an environmental assessment.

The Supreme Court's order to halt the project followed a social-media campaign and a petition to the oil minister and chief of the Department of Environment. Activists say the plant will have adverse environmental impacts on the coastal region. Celebrities, including actress Hedieh Tehrani, have backed the campaign, posting photos and banners on their social media pages.

The site is only a few kilometers from Miankaleh Peninsula in the east of the coastal region of Mazandaran, about 45km from Behshahr. The nearly 70,000-hectare peninsula, which separates the Gorgan Bay from the Caspian Sea, is home to a variety of birds and reptiles, and was designated as an international Unesco biosphere reserve in 1976.

When he inaugurated the project March 11, Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi said it met environmental requirements, but the following day Ali Salajegjeh, head of the Environment Department, said the department had not authorized the plant’s construction.

75,000 jobs

Salajegheh has said some lawmakers support the plant on the grounds it can create 75,000 jobs. But the lawmakers have not substantiated such a high number. Usually a few hundred people work in a petrochemical plant. He has also argued that wildlife in the Miankaleh lagoon would be threatened by the project’s requirement for water and that the plant would cause pollution.

The project is owned by Amirabad-e Mazandaran Limited, which according to the official gazette was established less than a year ago by companies outside petrochemicals. Within an usually fast few months, the oil ministry agreed to provide natural gas for the project, which reportedly will produce 400,000 tons of propylene a year.

The official news agency, IRNA, reported Sunday that President Ebrahim Raisi had ordered the project scrapped. Government Spokesman Ali Bahadori-Jahromi said April 5 that the project would not go ahead before being endorsed by the Department of Environment.

Salajegheh has pledged not to surrender to any pressures to endorse the project and the official news agency, IRNA, reported Sunday that President Ebrahim Raisi had ordered the project to be scrapped. Government Spokesman Ali Bahadori-Jahromi also said on April 5 that the project would not be implemented before being endorsed by the Department of Environment.

Critics suspect the company that owns the project of having support from centers of power who are so influential that they can even bypass the President's orders.

"The halt in the construction of Miankaleh petrochemical plant is good news, but experience proves that the halt will be temporary, and contractors will return with even more destructive methods,” Javad Heydarian, a journalist focused on environmental issues tweeted Tuesday. “Those who implement such projects have so much money, power, and influence that they don't [have to] abide by any laws."

The two Arab countries announced in March that they will develop the Durra natural gas field, which is adjacent to Iran’s offshore Arash field at the tip of the Persian Gulf. At the time, the Kuwaiti government said that Durra is "entirely a Kuwaiti and Saudi field" and that the issue to be settled with Iran is just the demarcation of the area offshore a neutral zone shared by Kuwait and Saudi Arabia lying adjacent to Iran's maritime zone.

Iran denounced the Kuwaiti announcement on March 26, saying a joint Saudi-Kuwaiti project would be illegal without Iran’s participation.

Foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said, "The Arash/Al-Durra gas field is a joint field between Iran, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Parts of it are located in areas between Iran and Kuwait whose water boundaries have not been defined. The Islamic Republic of Iran also reserves the right to exploit the gas field".

The two Persian Gulf Arab monarchies reaffirmed their right to develop the Durra natural gas field, located in this area, the Saudi Press Agency added, citing a Saudi foreign ministry statement.

Saudi Arabia and Kuwait expect to produce one billion standard cubic feet per day of gas and 84,000 barrels per day of condensates.

The Washington-based magazine reported on Monday that Iran has helped Hezbollah become “the most sophisticated and influential Middle Eastern terrorist organization in cyberspace after the collapse of the Islamic State caliphate”.

The report, titled “How Iran Built Hezbollah Into a Top Cyber Power”, said the country sees the militants as a “key part” of its cyber program.

The first reason why Iran is “increasingly utilizing Hezbollah as a cyber proxy” is because “it grants Tehran a degree of deniability”, it said

“By training and enhancing the cyber forces of its Lebanese ally, foreign powers may not retaliate against Iranian targets after a Hezbollah-initiated cyber attack”, the article reads.

According to some reports, the Hezbollah cyber unit is likely based in Beirut's southern neighborhood of Dahieh and has computer equipment that is similar to Tehran's Sharif University.

The unit is said to work under the direction of the elite Quds Force of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC), and is primarily tasked with gathering intelligence on Lebanese state institutions as well as conducting cyberattacks on strategic targets in the Persian Gulf states such as gas and oil companies.

According Western cyber security experts, a Hezbollah-affiliated cyber unit, known as Lebanese Cedar APT, launched attacks in January 2021 that lasted for more than a year on telecommunications companies and internet providers in the United States and many other countries.

In 2010, the Obama administration described Hezbollah as "the most technically-capable terrorist group in the world."

However, the IRGC is not simply a military organization. It also controls at least one fifth of Iran's economy. Opposition to delisting IRGC is growing in the US Congress, and one Iranian analyst says it could take months before the two sides resolve the issue.

Media reports indicate the United States has suggested it can delist the IRGC but keep its extraterritorial Qods (Quds) Force on the Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) list. From a chronological perspective, the Qods Force was designated in 2007 and it was the Trump Administration that designated the entire IRGC as a terrorist organization in 2019.

Earlier this week, some 250 Iranian lawmakers called on President Ebrahim Raisi to take a tougher position vis-à-vis the United States while some of them insisted that Iran should do away with the nuclear deal as it has not befitted from it.

Iranian academic and international relations expert Amir Ali Abolfath told Rouydad24 news website in Tehran on Tuesday that the Islamic Republic insists "all of the sanctions imposed on Iran after the 2018 US pull-out from the JCPOA should be lifted no matter they are about nuclear, missile or terrorist activities and the IRGC should be delisted."

He explained that if the United States keeps the Qods Force in the FTO list but delists the IRGC, this means that Washington likes to bring back the clock to pre-2019 period, but currently, Washington's plans are not quite clear.

Meanwhile, Abolfath said, "The IRGC is active in many areas including the economy. It owns many companies that could be sanctioned if the IRGC remained listed. There are many non-military companies whose board members were former IRGC officers or were linked to it. This means that If the IRGC remains in the FTO list, Iran's economic benefits from the JCPOA will be affected."

He added: "Iran does not insist on the delisting of the Qods Force as it has no economic activity and its commanders usually do not travel abroad [beyond regional counties]. But IRGC owns companies, such as in the telecommunication and shipping sectors…that will be affected by sanctions."

Abolfath also pointed out that any agreement at this point will not last longer than two or three years. If Republicans return to power, they will do away with the deal. This a challenge for Iranian officials who have already been in this position after former president Donald Trump withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018.

Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said recently that Iran has exchanged messages with the Washington, making it clear that it is important for Iran that the IRGC's dignity and role remain intact as one of the country's most key security and defense organizations.

He continued: "We can never allow ourselves to tell the US side that we can ignore the problem of IRGC [remaining listed]. Like many other discussions between us and the Americans, the IRGC is also a topic of the negotiations."

Abolfath, however, acknowledged that "the subject of the IRGC is one of the main problems in the negotiations and we have reached a disappointing deadlock over the subject. But the situation might change in the coming weeks. At the end, there has to be an agreement, but it could take another 6 months or a year before we get there."

In the meantime, new US sanctions against companies linked to the IRGC such as Parchin Chemical Industries, Pars Bana-ye Sadr and Sina Composite Delijan in early April has made the situation even more complicated.

In an article published in Tel Aviv University's Dayan Center for Strategic Studies journal Turkeyscope on Tuesday, Ambassador Hasan Murat Mercan highlighted the strong historical relationship between the Jewish and Turkish nations and urged further cooperation, especially in fields of security and energy.

Without mentioning Iran, he wrote, “Turkish-Israeli interaction offers more than a conventional regional partnership in the face of malign actors and trends”, adding that “Dealing with malign actors and their activities throughout our region is a particular area for enhanced coordination”.

“A more robust regional security cooperation between the two, with a specific focus on fighting terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, will also have an added value to both countries’ national security,” he added.

Calling for engagement on regional affairs, he said that “Turkish-Israeli partnership would be effective to further curb destabilizing moves in broader Middle East and North Africa (MENA)”.

The power competition, which is the dominant trend in today’s world and runs the risk of confrontation, “writes off the so-called value of proxy-led spheres of influence” as “inter-regional and intra-regional alliances are becoming all the more relevant”.

Calling the Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s visit to Turkey “a visible message of peace and partnership”, he said both Herzog and Erdoğan defined the visit as a “new milestone” and expressed their shared goal to revive political dialogue and foster regional cooperation.