Iran International
US President Joe Biden’s threat to resort to use force against Iran is the result of his “sleepiness”, the spokesman of Iran’s armed forces said on Friday.
Local media quoted Brigadier Gen. Abolfazl Shekarchi as saying: “The use the phrase “resorting to force” by the "poor" American president and "the helpless" prime minister of the fake Zionist regime is an attempt at psychological warfare, delusion and sleepiness they are known for.”
The use of “sleepiness” by the Iranian official was a clear case of ‘plagiarism’ by the Iranian military spokesman taken from Tehran’s arch foe, former US President Donald Trump who called President Biden “sleepy Joe” during the last presidential campaign.
“The Americans and Zionists (Israel) know very well the price for using the word 'force against Iran,'" Shekarchi said.
"Biden must have been sleepy when he threatened Iran," he said, adding, "Watch your soldiers’ pants - they might get wet in the Persian Gulf!”
The Islamic Republic has tried to put a brave face during Biden’s regional tour, which started with the US President telling an Israeli television that he would be willing to use force against Iran “as a last resort”, if it tries to build nuclear weapons.
This clear statement showing his intention to strengthen ties with America’s traditional allies in the Middle East was followed by a Joint Declaration with Israel on July 14, giving a shared commitment to Israel’s military supremacy and preventing Iran from building nuclear weapons.
The declaration was followed by Israeli national security advisor Eyal Hulata telling Israel’s Channel 13 that his government will act as it sees fit regarding the Iranian threat. “We are not afraid to tell the Americans that we have differences of opinion with them, or that even inside Iran we carry out operations,” adding that Israel acts according to its own determinations.
Hulata came out openly acknowledging that Israel has carried out attacks inside Iran, especially “in the past one year”, insisting that the US “supports us” and Israel’s operation do not harm its relations with the US President.
Despite these statements, Iran’s foreign ministry showed a low-key reaction on Fridayto developments during Biden’s trip to Israel.
The ministry spokesman Naser Kanani wrote on Twitter that the United States issued a clear and lasting commitment to protect Israel and its military superiority, in the Joint Declaration. But he added, “Make no mistake. The target [of the declaration] is not just Iran, but all Arab and Muslim countries should accept Israel’s superiority.” He concluded, “Therefore, the main source of threat for the region is completely clear.”
The official government new website IRNA also argued that the US military guarantees to Israel are nothing new and come from the past decades.
Iran’s defiant foreign policy seems to be caught between two opposing forces. On the one hand officials, usually military commanders, issue strong statements and even threats, while sometimes others sound low-key or try to dispel the specter of a military threat and more isolation.
The reason is the country’s domestic economic crisis, that many recognize as the result of decades of anti-West and anti-Israel policies. The social and economic crisis has reached a point that some officials sometimes try not to anger the people by more bellicose postures.
Nevertheless, IRNA called the US-Israeli declaration an “anti-Iranian” statement, denying that Tehran poses any threat to regional countries to warrant a US policy of fostering an alliance among its allies.
But Tehran is continuing uranium enrichment and is said to have enough fissile material at this point to produce a nuclear weapon, while more than a year of nuclear talks with the US have remained stalled.
The declaration, with the text signed by Israeli Minister Yair Lapid and United States President Joe Biden released Thursday, expressed “unshakeable US commitment” to Israel’s “military edge.” Washington pledged further “defense assistance” on top of the $38 billion 10-year Memorandum of Understanding in 2016 under President Barack Obama and the $1-billion assistance after the 2021 Israeli-Palestinian violence centered on Gaza.
The document – dubbed the ‘Jerusalem Declaration’ – singled out as integral “to this pledge…the commitment never to allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon.” The US was, it said, “prepared to use all elements of its national power to ensure that outcome.”
While US officials have previously spoken vaguely of means to preclude an Iranian weapon, this is apparently the first time such a commitment has been made openly with Israel, which is widely believed to have carried out attacks on Iranian nuclear sites, which are monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and killed its scientists.
Lapid reportedly told Biden that the time had come to end diplomatic efforts to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, from which Trump withdrew the US and which Biden had an election commitment to revive.Lapid argued instead for a “credible military threat.”
Aside from the nuclear issue, Biden committed the US “together with other partners to confront Iran’s aggression and destabilizing activities, whether advanced directly or through proxies and terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.”
‘Robust regional architecture’
While the declaration noted Biden’s “longstanding and consistent support of a two-state solution” allowing a Palestinian state in Israeli-occupied territories, it pledged to work against “all efforts to boycott or de-legitimize Israel” and “to firmly reject the BDS campaign.” Calls for boycotting and disinvestment from Israeli entities active in the occupied West Bank have gathered momentum since rights groups including Amnesty International concluded that Israeli military rule amounted to a form of apartheid where Jewish settlers had political and civil rights denied to Muslims and Christians.
The Biden-Lapid declaration anticipated Biden’s arrival in Saudi Arabia Friday as part of a process of “building a robust regional architecture.” It hailed Israel’s 2020 ‘normalization’ agreements with Bahrain, Morocco, and the United Arab Emirates as important “to the cause of regional security, prosperity and peace” and hailed March’s Negev summit in Israel – attended by the foreign ministers of of Bahrain, Egypt, Israel, Morocco and the United States – as “efforts to build a new regional framework that is changing the face of the Middle East.”
Officials and hardliner media in Tehran have already condemned the emergence of an Israeli Arab alliance, telling the United States that no regional arrangement “can save the Zionist regime”.
Nour News, close to Iran’s supreme national security council on Thursday threatened that Tehran can use “new methods” for “punishing” Israel, and energy shipments could be endangered in the region. This was a little-veiled threat to shipping in the Persian Gulf and possibly in the Red Sea, where Iran’s Houthi allies have attacked vessels in the past.
Iranian government media simply carried the news of the US-Israeli declaration, as a first reaction Thursday afternoon, but further official and semi-official reaction will follow in coming days.
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.”