Iraq’s Influential Cleric Warns Against Foreign Interventions

Air Force One touch-downed at 6pm local time, following a direct flight from Israel to Saudi Arabia portrayed by United States officials as evidence of Saudi Arabia’s decision to allow Israeli overflights. Biden headed to the Jeddah al-Salam royal palace where he fist-bumped Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman before pictures showed him in an ornate diwan with 86-year-old King Salman bin Abdulaziz.

This was not the decidedly low-key welcome for President Barack Obama in 2016 after he had suggested in Atlantic magazine that the Saudis needed to “share” the region with Iran. But neither was it the flamboyant welcome for President Donald Trump in 2017, when the former reality television star joined in a sword dance.

Nonetheless, within minutes of Prince Mohammad greeting the president, the Saudi Foreign Ministry website posted pictures showing them together.

Biden’s regional tour is attempting to balance various pressures and interests. The summit meeting Saturday of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries with Egypt, Iraq and Jordan, will have Iran high on the agenda, and is expected to give some endorsement to developing air-defense cooperation with Israel aimed primarily at Iranian drones and missiles.

But despite a threat of force in the last resort to stop an Iranian bomb, Biden also was clear in Israel that he remains committed to diplomacy aimed at reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), which the Israeli leadership opposes.

Although media attention in the US has focused on prospects for the Saudis pumping more oil and relieving inflationary pressures that have sent American gasoline prices towards $5 a barrel, US National Security Adviser told reporters en route to Jeddah that any action would be “done in the context of Opec+.” The grouping of oil producers, led by Saudi Arabia and Russia, has agreed only modest adjustments to cutbacks during the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic and is not due to meet until August 3.

Some analysts argue that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are hedging as they see Biden trying to follow Trump in reducing the direct US role. Hence both have developing diplomatic contacts with Iran and have not cut back ties with Moscow despite the Ukraine crisis.

Divided Democrats

With so many international uncertainties, a sense that Biden may be a one-term president has been enhanced both by Democrats critical of his leadership and by polling evidence. A New York Times/Siena College poll published this week found 64 percent of Democrat voters saying they wanted someone other than Biden to stand in 2024, with his age at 79 years (33 percent) vying with this performance (32 percent) as the main reason.

‘Progressive’ Democrats are uneasy both about Biden’s performance in Israel, when they feel he failed to highlight Palestinian rights, and his developing relationship with the Saudi crown prince, who US intelligence reported was involved in planning the 2018 murder in Turkey of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

NBC News reporter Peter Alexander wrote on Twitter than a Saudi aide “grabbed my arm tightly” after he shouted “Jamal Khashoggi, will you apologize to his family?” Both Prince Mohammad and Biden ignored the question.

But there are also Democrats who believe – alongside many Republicans – that Biden, regardless of human rights issues, should press ahead with building new regional security arrangements including the Saudis.

Ahead of Biden’s regional trip, Robert Menendez, the Democrat Chair of the Senate’s Foreign Affairs Committee, issued a statement Tuesday arguing he needed to “unite regional actors as a strong counter-weight to an Iran intent on bolstering its nuclear capabilities and menacing its neighbors.” Menendez opposed the JCPOA in 2015 and said in May its revival was not in US interests.

On Friday, the French foreign ministry specifically named the three Iranian award-winning filmmakers who were arrested on July 8 and 11 – namely Jafar Panahi, Mohammad Rasoulof and Mostafa Aleahmad.

Earlier in the week, the Cannes Film Festival, the Berlinale, the European Film Academy and the International Coalition for Filmmakers at Risk also called for the immediate release of the prominent filmmakers.

Panahi, who has won numerous awards, including the Golden Leopard at Locarno Festival, the Golden Lion in Venice, and the Silver Bear at the Berlinale, was arrested July 11 as he was protesting the detention of two other award-winning filmmakers Mohammad Rasoulof and Mostafa Alehahmad.

Rasoulof – another prominent filmmaker with several international awards such as the Golden Bear – and Alehahmad – who is known in international film galas for his short works -- were arrested July 8 as part of the Iranian crackdown on the signatories of a collective statement titled “Lay down the gun” issued by more than 100 film industry personalities in the end of May.

The statement called on military and security forces who “have become tools for cracking down on the people,” not to suppress protesters during a wave of protests across Iran that were triggered when a 10-story building collapsed in Abadan, leaving at least 40 people dead and dozens missing.

In a long piece, the agency used the term “attack” for Russia’s intervention in Ukraine, rather than referring to a “crisis” as state-owned media has generally done. Fars also stressed Amir-Abdollahian had dismissed Monday’s claim from United States National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan that Tehran was preparing to send drones, some armed, to Moscow to help its military effort.

UPDATE - Later, the White House released satellite photos and information that Russian military officials visited an Iranian drone base in Kerman to review military UAVs.

This was the fourth phone conversation between the two men, Fars explained, during the crisis, the first before hostilities began in February and three since then.

The agency suggested Amir-Abdollahian had played a mediating role conveying messages between the two sides, including during his trip to Moscow in mid-March and at the meeting of Afghanistan’s neighbors in China, which was March 30-31.

In Friday’s call, Fars reported, Amir-Abdollahian expressed “opposition to Russia’s attack on Ukraine” and reiterated that Iran had “tried to stop this war” and facilitate diplomacy between the two sides. This was in line, the foreign minister had explained, with Iran’s opposition to wars in Afghanistan, Yemen and Palestine.

The foreign minister pointed out that Sullivan’s claims about drones had coincided with “Biden’s trip to occupied Palestine” and said they had been made “simply for political ends.” Fars noted that Iran’s foreign ministry had already stated that while Tehran had “different areas of cooperation with Russia, including defense,” it would take military side and had also made clear its belief that the war in Ukraine should end with a ceasefire.

‘Nato tools,’ grain supplies

Fars also noted the interests of arms producers in “some western countries, trying to sell products,” and reminded readers that at his joint press conference in Tehran June 22-3 with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov Amir-Abdollahian had condemned the US “using Nato tools” as one of the roots of the conflict, a reference to the alliance’s expansion in eastern Europe since 1999.

While Iran has far more imports from Russia than from Ukraine, like many other countries it is feeling the inflationary pinch of disruption in supplies. Iranian Oil Minister Javad Owji told the semi-official Iranian news agency the Young Journalists Club in May that Iran expected to import 5 million tonnes of grain, including some wheat, from Russia in the Iranian year ending March 2023. Tehran’s domestic wheat production is being hampered by low rainfall.

It was also noteworthy that Fars made no mention of the disputween the two countries over the Ukrainian airliner shot down in 2020 over Tehran by two missiles fired by the IRGC. Ukrain had been pursuing the case for a full accounting by Tehran and compensation before the Russian invasion.

An early end to the Ukraine war would not only ease pressure on the Iranian economy but placate those Iranians who have taken up the Ukrainian case, with some gathering outside the Russian embassy in Tehran back in February to chant “death to Putin.” The conservative Jomhouri Eslami newspaper has been firm in backing Ukraine’s cause and condemning Moscow.

The first UAV carrier flotilla of Iran’s Army, comprised of surface and subsurface units equipped with various types of combat, reconnaissance and kamikaze drones, was unveiled by the southern fleet of the Navy in a ceremony attended by Commander-in-Chief of the Islamic Republic of Iran Army Major general Abdolrahim Mousavi and Commander of the Iranian Navy Commodore Shahram Irani. 

According to state media, the drones that were displayed on Friday included the Pelican, Arash, Homa, Chamrosh, Jubin, Ababil-4 and Bavar-5, but it was not clear how many vessels or drones were included in each unit, only that one ship carried 50 drones.

Mousavi said the reconnaissance drones have increased the intelligence sway of Iran’s vessels to hundreds of kilometers beyond the borders of the country, adding that the Navy’s suicide and combat drones have leveled up Iran’s deterrence power. 

US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan Monday said that Russia wants to obtain hundreds of drones from Iran, both for surveillance and attack, to use in its war in Ukraine, adding that Iran is “preparing to train Russian forces to use these UAVs with initial training sessions slated to begin as soon as early July.”

Iran is known to have supplied UAVs to its proxies in several countries across the Middle East.

“The Americans and Zionists (Israel) know very well the price of using the word 'force' against Iran,” Brigadier General Abolfazl Shekarchi, spokesman for the Iranian armed forces, was quoted as saying by Iranian media on Friday.

According to a report by the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, Benny Gantz disclosed to Biden agreements with some Arab countries with whom Israel does not have official diplomatic ties. 

Saudi Arabia had signaled its backing for the so-called Abraham Accords under which the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain forged relations with Israel built on common commercial interests and worries about Iran. But Riyadh has stopped short of formally recognizing neighboring Israel.

Saudi Arabia will allow overflights to and from Israel, in a decision welcomed by Biden who is visiting the kingdom on Friday. He called the decision an important step towards building a more integrated and stable Middle East region.

The House of Representatives on Thursday backed legislation to work on establishing a joint Middle East air-defense alliance as part of the passage of the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act.

Last Thursday, Gantz revealed that in the period since the signing of the Abraham Accords some two years ago, there have been more than 150 meetings between Israeli defense officials with their counterparts across the Middle East, not including Jordan and Egypt, in which Israeli weapons have been sold to moderate Sunni Arab countries for over $3 billion.