Iran Website Warns US, Threatens Israel As Biden Visits Region
Iran might resort to new methods to “punish” Israel, a website close to its security establishment said on Thursday, as President Joe Biden visits the region.
Iran might resort to new methods to “punish” Israel, a website close to its security establishment said on Thursday, as President Joe Biden visits the region.
Nour News close to Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of the supreme national security council also said that “Any steps to disrupt the current security order in West Asia can impact other spheres, such as transportation and transit of energy and add to the existing global food and energy crisis.”
The reference to transportation of energy could be a threat to shipping in the Persian Gulf. Iran in recent and distant past has repeatedly made such threats and in the summer of 2019, attacks took place against many tankers, which were generally blamed on Iran.
The note published by the “international desk” of Nour News also dangled the prospect of continued nuclear talks, as President Joe Biden on Wednesday told an Israeli television that he is willing to use force against Iran “as a last resort.”
The article went on to argue that Israel has always opposed the 2015 nuclear agreement known as JCPOA and is determined to block its revival. In a candid admission of mysterious incidents, Nour News said that Israel has intensified attacks inside Iran in the past year, “to perhaps create chaos and fish in muddy waters…”
Talks since April 2021to revive the JCPOA are now stalled, with Iran speeding up its uranium enrichment, which is seen as a serious step to approach a nuclear weapons threshold.
The United States “has adopted silence toward Israel’s destructive acts,” the article stressed, and has shown its inclination to use these acts to get leverage in nuclear talks. But Washington should know that “Israel’s mischiefs can, under some circumstances, cause loss of control over the situation and lead to the use of different options for punishing the usurping Zionist regime.”
Nour News then picked up the issue of a proposed joint air defense network between Israel and Arab states, ridiculing Israel’s capabilities. It said the current Israeli air defense weapons were for stopping small, short-range rockets and were ineffective against ballistic and cruise missiles, a reference to Iran’s long-range capabilities that have created concern among regional countries.
Nour News had issued a warning on July 10 about US, Israeli and Arab plans to set up a regional air defense system. It said that “the creation of a joint defense pact in the region by the US with participation and hidden management of Zionists is a threatening act.”
The plan to set up coordination between air defenses of Saudi Arabia, Israel, the United Arab Emirates and other allies goes back months. The Wall Street Journal reported in June that a secret meeting took place between top military officers of the countries involved in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt in March.
Biden’s trip to Israel and Saudi Arabia, his recent tougher stance toward Iran, as wells as talk of steps to establish cooperation between Riyadh and Tel-Aviv have apparently rattled Tehran officials.
President Ebrahim Raisi on Wednesday also warned about a regional alliance aimed at Iran. "if American visits to the regional countries are aimed at strengthening the position of the Zionist regime and normalizing its relations with certain countries, their efforts will not in any way bring about security for the Zionists."
First the news came that the government was planning to restore the policy of offering cheap dollars to importers of essential goods, which would completely reverse its decision in early May to remove the indirect subsidy. Then it was clarified that the government is lowering its calculation for import taxes of some goods to prevent further rise in its already 55-percent annual inflation.
One thing which is clear is that top economic officials are contradicting one another about how they exactly want to mollify the effects of their “major economic surgery” in May that led to prices doubling for many essential goods. Reports say the government has presented a bill to somehow lower cost of imports for consumers.
Removing the indirect subsidy of offering cheap dollars ($1=42,000 rial) to importers has resulted in a massive hike in prices for most commodities including basic foods, medicine and medical equipment, animal feed and many other commodities despite government’s promises that it would not affect the prices of anything other than bread, chicken, eggs, oil and dairy products.
Reportedly, the new bill submitted to the parliament Monday, will lower import taxes for some basic commodities, but the mechanism remains foggy. The most likely decision will be to calculate import duties not by the actual rate of the dollar in the local market, but a fictitious rate eightfold lower, which applied when importers were receiving cheap dollars from the government until April.
Economy Minister Ehsan Khandouzi has explained that the government took the decision to prevent further price hikes in coming months.
Abbas Argoun, a member of Tehran Chamber of Commerce, told Etemad newspaper that the higher rate in the calculation of import taxes results in cash flow problems for producers and businesses, because imported raw materials become more expensive and production costs rise.
But Argoun explained that lowering import duties now will cut into government tax revenues to the tune of one billion dollars.
Ali Ghanbari, expert in international economy, told Fararu news website that the decision is unlikely to reduce prices of imported goods or the cost of production.
“Instead of such hasty policies, the government must be seeking fundamental solutions to control inflation and high prices,” he said, adding that inflation and prices of basic commodities will continue to increase given the continuation of US sanctions and uncertainties regarding restoration of the 2015 nuclear deal.
Criticizing the government's decision to revive the 42,000 rial rate in import tax calculations, Hamidreza Salehi, a member of Tehran Chamber of Commerce, said to bring prices down the government could have reduced tariffs instead which could cause much less confusion and problems.
To compensate the hike in the prices of essential foods the government is paying around 4 million rials (about $15) to 30 percent of the population at the lowest-income groups, and around 3 million to 60 percent of the population each month. This means the government must spend the equivalent of $850-900 million a month to placate an impoverished population. It cannot afford such a huge cash handout every month and in fact, it has not paid the July stipend.
The special exchange rate was introduced in 2018 to control inflation when the United States pulled out of the Obama-era nuclear agreement known as JCPOA and imposed crippling sanctions on the Islamic Republic.
However, in the bigger scheme of politics in the volatile region, analysts disagreed over whether his Mid East tour was a move to reshape regional politics or a doomed exercise to keep down oil prices.
Ahead of Biden reaching an Arab summit Friday in Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, president of the United Arab Emirates, said in a televised address Wednesday that the UAE would extend a “hand of friendship” to all countries seeking peaceful coexistence.
Friday’s meeting of the six-country Gulf Cooperation Council, Egypt, Iraq, and Jordan has been widely billed as a means to take forward shared air-defense measures between Gulf Arab states, Israel, and the US to counter any threat from Iranian or Iranian-supplied missiles and drones. Biden also told Israeli Channel 12 that the US would if needs be use force to preclude Iran developing a nuclear weapon.
The statement underlined the dimmer prospects of an agreement to revive the 2015 nuclear deal, and a tougher posture by Biden.
Incremental measures are also expected between Saudi Arabia and Israel, including overflight rights but stopping short of Israel’s ‘normalization’ agreements with the UAE and Bahrain brokered by the Trump administration in 2020. Saudi Arabia has so far upheld Arab League policy, dating to 2002, that normalization required Israeli acceptance of a viable Palestinian state.
American media meanwhile are interested in whether Biden can persuade the Saudis to pump more oil and ease inflationary pressure at US gas stations currently selling at near $5 a barrel.
Arriving at Ben Gurion Airport, Biden bumped fists with Israeli caretaker Prime Minister Yair Lapid and proclaimed, “not all Zionists are Jews.” Arguing the visit flew in the face of Palestinian rights despite Biden’s formal commitment to a “two state” future, Wasel Abu Youssef, an executive member of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), said the trip aimed at “integrating the occupation state in the Arab region and…[building] a new alliance against Iran.”
‘Decisive response’
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi was reported to tell the cabinet Wednesday that Iran was “watching the region closely” as Biden’s trip developed.
“If the American officials’ visits to the regional states are aimed at strengthening the position of the Zionist regime and normalizing its relations with certain countries, their efforts will not in any way bring about security for the Zionists,” Raisi said. “Tehran has repeatedly told those who convey US messages to Iran that the slightest move against Iran’s territorial integrity will face a decisive response.”
In a Washington Post opinion piece ahead of his visit headlined ‘Why I’m Going to Saudi Arabia,’ Biden suggested he wanted human rights upheld in the Middle East and any US combat role ended. He claimed that the “frequency of Iranian-sponsored attacks compared with two years ago” had “dropped precipitously” and that the region was less pressurized, partly due to Iraq mediating between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
‘Zero-sum diplomacy’
The build-up to Biden’s trip has seen widely different assessments by analysts. Criticizing the president, Daniel Levy, president of the US Middle East Project and a senior advisor in the prime minister’s office under Ehud Barak (1999-2000), accused Biden of “jumping on the normalization bandwagon.” Writing on the Responsible Statecraft website July 12, Levy said Biden was working to “give Israel a freer hand in trampling Palestinian rights and to advance a militarist zero-sum approach to regional ‘diplomacy’.”
By contrast, Hussein Ibish of the Arab Gulf States Institute, wrote July 11 for Bloomberg that Biden wanted extend to the Middle East his “success in reunifying and revitalizing the alliance of Western democracies..[by giving] Washington its most dynamic international leadership role in decades.”
Ibish urged Biden to offer the Saudis “some carrots, mostly in terms of military hardware,” while working to “reinforce the primacy of countering Iran,” while the Saudis “seriously undertake aiding the US to manage energy pricing, beyond the modest production increases reached by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries…”
In the Middle East, Ibish wrote, “the common adversary is Iran, not Russia…” All six Arab states at Friday’s summit should acknowledge they are “best protected through a US-led grouping aimed at maintaining regional order and stability, to which they can each contribute and from which they will all benefit.”