US Envoy Says Iran Can Choose A Better Future Or Side With Russia

IRNA headlined its account of the meeting with a call, endorsed by both Khamenei and Putin, for United States forces to be driven out of north-east Syria, “east of the Euphrates [river]…an area rich in oil and agriculture,” where American troops, first deployed in 2015, have remained since 2018 to ‘secure’ Syria’s main oil-fields.

But perhaps a more notable part of IRNA’s report was Khamenei’s clearest expression yet of support for Russian action in Ukraine. While describing war as “brutal and hard,” Iran’s leader suggested that had Russia not “taken the initiative, the other side, with its own initiative would have created a war anyway.”

Iran’s leader cited the 2014 Ukraine “coup” – when protests overthrew Moscow-inclined Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich and prompted Russia’s seizure of Crimea – and the expansion of Nato, which has expanded to take in 14 eastern European countries since 1999. “Nato is a dangerous creature,” Khamenei said, “[that] didn’t recognize any limits or borders. If you cannot stand up to them in Ukraine, then a little while later, with the excuse of Crimea, they would have started this war anyway.”

World events, Khamenei said, had increased the need for “reciprocal cooperation” between Iran and Russia, meaning that “many agreements and contracts, including in oil and gas…must be pursued…and become operational.” This was a “necessity…especially after western sanctions” against Russia over Ukraine, Iran’s leader said. Russian energy giant Gazprom and the National Iranian Oil Company signed a $40-billion energy memorandum-of-understanding Tuesday morning.

The effect of US Middle East policies – including in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine – was becoming more limited, Khamenei said. The American presence in north-east Syria should end with their expulsion. President Ebrahim Raisi also referred to the US troop presence in Syria Tuesday to Iranian state television, arguing that it destabilized the country.

Cooperation between Moscow and Tehran would reach its “zenith” in the coming period, Khamenei said, stressing the need alongside other countries of continuing to expand trade away “step by step” from the dollar as the world “lost trust” in the US currency. Both Russia and China – whose dollarized bilateral trade fell below 50 percent in 2020 – are encouraging other countries to follow suit, including through groupings like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which Iran joined last year.

US ‘deceitful’

“Americans were both bullies and deceitful,” Khamenei said, as had been shown by their role in the dissolution of the Soviet Union, presumably in fostering nationalism in the Soviet republics.

Putin, IRNA reported, had said that while nobody wanted war, the West’s behavior had left the Kremlin “no choice but to react.” The Russian president said, according to IRNA, that some European countries had opposed talk of Ukraine joining Nato but had been cajoled by the US, revealing their lack of effective sovereignty.

The West did not consider Ukraine as a suitable candidate for NATO membership before the Russian invasion in February.

Putin described the US killing 2020 of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani “as another example of US evil.” He pointed out that sanctions against Russia over Ukraine had punished the west and others through higher energy prices and a food crisis.

Declaring a urgent need to deal with this threat, Biden on Tuesday authorized agencies to impose costs and consequences, including financial sanctions and visa bans, on malicious actors involved in hostage-taking, and charges agencies with developing new methods to deter hostage taking.

Foreign governments and human rights organizations have accused Iran of detaining foreigners and dual nationals on trumped up charges to use them for getting concessions from Western countries. US citizens Siamak Namazi and his father Baquer (Bagher) Namazi, Emad Shargi, and Morad Tahbaz and permanent resident Shahab Dalili are among the dual nationals or foreigners held in Iran on such charges. Iran also holds citizens of several countries including Germany, Austria, and Sweden, as de facto hostages.

In the executive order, known as Bolstering Efforts to Bring Hostages and Wrongfully Detained United States Nationals Home, Biden said “Terrorist organizations, criminal groups, and other malicious actors who take hostages for financial, political, or other gain — as well as foreign states that engage in the practice of wrongful detention, including for political leverage or to seek concessions from the United States.”

The US government must redouble its efforts at home and with partners abroad to deter these practices and to secure the release of those held as hostages or wrongfully detained, read the order. 

“I therefore determine that hostage-taking and the wrongful detention of United States nationals abroad constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States,” he said.

Tehran opposes any plan, being considered in Ankara, for expanded Turkish military intervention in Syria aimed variously at bolstering Syrian rebels, allowing refugees to return, and weakening Kurdish groups linked to Kurdish rebels inside Turkey.

Khamenei stressed Iran accepted Erdogan’s hatred of “terrorist groups,” presumably a reference to PYD (Democratic Union Party), which is linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), active mainly in Turkey, and Pejak, which operates in Iranian Kurdistan. The Iranian leader said Tehran would cooperate with Turkey “against terrorism” and emphasized Tehran’s respect for Turkey’s security and borders.

But Khamenei also said that ‘terrorism’ in Syria was not limited to one group and suggested that an attack in north Syria would “benefit terrorists,” destabilize the region, and “impede Syria’s political actions.” Turkey has generally supported mainly Sunni rebels, including militant Islamist groups, against President Bashar al-Assad, who has been supported by both Iran and Russia.

Khamenei and Erdogan agreed on the importance, according to Iran’s official news agency IRNA, of resolving differences through negotiations, citing the Astana process between Turkey, Iran and Russia, whose president Vladmir Putin arrives in Tehran for a three-way summit on Tuesday.

Both also stressed the importance of “Muslim unity,” with Khamenei describing the plight of the Palestinians as the most important issue for the “Islamic world.” Israel has a mixed relationship with Turkey, seen in Erdogan scaling back anti-Zionist rhetoric over the past two years and trade reaching around $7 billion in 2021, largely in Turkey’s favor.

IRNA noted Erdogan’s expressed opposition to unilateral sanctions – a reference to United States measures against Iran – and its commitment to Iran’s “legitimate expectations” from reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, currently subject to year-long talks between Tehran and world powers.

Boosting trade

Khamenei talked of boosting economic links in both quantity and quality, saying Erdogan and Raisi would address the issue in other meetings. US ‘maximum pressure sanctions’ after 2018, threatening punitive action against third parties dealing with Iran, saw bilateral trade drop by around two-thirds by 2020 from $10.7 billion in 2017.

While analysts question figures suggesting trade has now rebounded beyond 5.6 billion in 2021, Erdogan said in Tehran he believed it could reach $30 billion.

Aside from resolving difference over Syria, where Russia continues its military presence in support of Assad, the three-way summit in Tehran is set to address a possible safe corridor through Turkey of grain from Ukraine and Russia. Iran is one of many countries importing grain from Russia and facing steep increases in prices with the Ukraine crisis.

The visit also comes in the wake of US President Joe Biden’s visit to Israel and Saudi Arabia, where he committed Washington to avoid leaving a “vacuum” in the Middle East to be filled by Russia, China, and Iran. Saudi Arabian officials have rejected talk of a new “defensive alliance” against Iran, as Riyadh continues to look to Moscow to coordinate global oil supplies through Opec+, which meets early in August.

The current worth of Russia’s contracts in Iran's oil and gas fields is $4 billion, but Iran’s state news agency IRNA says if the new MoU leads to any contracts, Moscow’s total investment will increase 10-fold to $40 billion.

The agreement, as announced by the oil ministry’s Shana news agency, covers development of the Kish and North Pars gas-fields, as well as six oil fields.

It was penned during an online ceremony by the companies’ chief executives on the day Vladimir Putin arrives for a three-way summit with Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The most significant aspect of the Gazprom-NIOC memorandum for Iran may be access to technology for LNG (liquid natural gas), which Tehran once hoped to access through agreements with western majors, especially Total, that withdrew in the face of United States ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions after 2018.

North Pars has around 33,000 billion cubic feet (bcf) of gas, and Kish gas-field 8,300 bcf. Both are currently at the feasibility stage.

While Iran has the world’s second largest gas reserves after Russia, it has been slow to develop its fields and boost exports in the face of sanctions.

Putin’s visit is being watched close with the expectation of closer links between Moscow and Tehran, boosting trade from just $4 billion in 2021, with both subject to international sanctions and as the Ukraine crisis pushes up global oil and food prices.

A brief overview of Rouhani’s remarks were carried by Aftab News website in Tehran.

Rouhani who was meeting with former officials and aides in his office in Tehran on the occasion of Eid Ghadir, said his administration could have removed US sanctions in 2021, in the Iranian month of Esfand (February 21-March 20). He added that “unfortunately” the parliament passed the ‘Strategic Action to Eliminate Sanctions and Defend Iranian Nation's Interests’ bill on December 1, 2020,

The bill, adopted by the hardliner-dominated parliament, boosted uranium enrichment, limited nuclear inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), demanding the removal of all sanctions.

The February-March date Rouhani mentioned as the time when his administration could have lifted United States’ sanctions predates the start of negotiations on April 7, 2021, in Vienna to revive the 2015 nuclear deal known as the JCPOA.

If Rouhani’s claim is true, it means that his government had already reached an agreement with President Joe Biden’s administration, which had just assumed office, which in turn could mean that some sort of negotiation might have taken place even before Biden took office.

The parliament’s bill that Rouhani referred to was adopted as a reaction to the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh a few days earlier, presumably by Israel, but in fact the outlines of the law had already been proposed on November 4, one day after the US presidential election.

During Rouhani’s eight-year, two-term presidency, hardliners loyal to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei persistently criticized him for the talks that led to the signing of the JCPOA in 2015, although without Khamenei’s blessing no agreement would have never materialized.

The criticism continued and intensified after former President Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement in May 2018 and imposed sanctions on Iran.

With the election of hardliner Ebrahim Raisi in June 2021, Iran suspended the Vienna talks for five months and when they resumed in November an agreement remained elusive until another suspension in March 2022, which still continues. The prospects for a deal have diminished, as Iran demands the removal of all post-2018 sanctions, including terrorism-related designations.

Rouhani has rarely responded to criticisms by hardliners over the nuclear issue and Iran’s economic crisis since he left office in August 2021.

Although some ‘reformist’ and former politicians and even senior clerics call for an agreement to lift the sanctions and ease hardship for the people, no one dares to say that Khamenei makes all decisions over key foreign policy and nuclear issues.

Rouhani told his former colleagues during the Friday meeting that he hopes the negotiations to revive the JCPOA will succeed. He added, “We have many enemies in the world and in the region and internal disagreements and divisions is not in the interest of anyone. We all have to help the government.”