Iran-Saudi-Chinese Deal Can Encroach On US Regional Policy

Relations between France and Iran have deteriorated in recent months with Tehran detaining seven French nationals in what Paris has said is state hostage taking.

One of those, Iranian-French academic Fariba Adelkhah, was released, but it is still unclear how much longer she will have to stay in Iran before returning to France.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Iran's foreign ministry spokesman said the French government had interfered and taken "destructive" positions regarding events in Iran.

"Obviously, these positions and the measures taken by France will not help in the negotiations for the prisoners," Nasser Kanaani told reporters.

French foreign ministry spokesperson Anne-Claire Legendre said Kanaani's remarks were extremely worrying and openly highlighted the "arbitrary character" of the detention of French citizens.

"This is an acknowledgement from the Iranian authorities that they are in breach of the Vienna convention on consular relations which constitutes the foundation of diplomatic relations between states," she said, calling for the French citizens to be released immediately.

In recent years, Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards have arrested dozens of dual nationals and foreigners, mostly on charges related to espionage and security.

Rights groups have accused Iran of trying to extract concessions from other countries through such arrests. Iran, which does not recognize dual nationality, denies taking prisoners to gain diplomatic leverage.

Mamdouh Saleh, a member of the parliament of Bahrain, told the Arabic service of Sputnik on Monday that negotiations between his country and Iran to renew relations are in process.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Nasser Kanaani also said Monday that Tehran is ready to improve ties with the Arab state again.

Meanwhile, Ahmed Al Musallam, Speaker of the Bahraini Parliament, held a meeting with a delegation from the Iranian Parliament in Manama.

The Iranian parliamentary delegation, headed by Mojtaba Rezakhah is in Bahrain to attend the International Inter-Parliamentary Union Assembly. This is the first time in seven years that Bahrain has received a senior delegation from the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Manama severed its relations with Tehran one day after Saudi Arabia cut ties with the Islamic Republic in 2015.

Iran and Saudi Arabia agreed to re-establish diplomatic ties after Chinese-mediated talks in Beijing last week. The two sides agreed to reinstate embassies and missions after seven years of deadlock.

While Saudi Arabia does not have relations with Israel, the Prime Minister and the leaders of the Israeli opposition are at loggerheads over the normalization of Saudi Arabia's ties with Iran, accusing each other of negligence, which led to the improvement of Tehran-Riyadh relations.

Israel’s Yediot Aharonot daily wrote Tuesday that the negotiations between Iran and Bahrain will be an important development after seven years of stalemate.

The Islamic Republic has been struggling with high inflation since 2019, but the raging inflation in the past Iranian year which ends on March 20, was seriously different from previous years.

Last May the government eliminated an annual food import subsidy of at least $10 billion, that immediately led to steep price increases. This was followed by a fall in the value of the national currency, making imports more expensive for the population.

According to Dideban website, the Raisi administration's refusal to provide cheap dollars for food imports had a serious impact, while the country was already witnessing an annual inflation rate above 40%.

However, the authorities emphasized that part of the galloping inflation was due to the subsidy that was a strain on government subsidies.

The government called its decision to scrap the food subsidy “economic surgery,” but it had no other plans to control prices.

Immediately following the announcement food prices jumped, with some items doubling or tripling in a matter of hours. Pasta is 137 percent more expensive than 12 months ago, while meat prices went up by 76 percent and milk by 80 percent.

Food prices continue to climb as the national currency declined by 50 percent in the past six months. According to the report of Statistical Center of Iran (SCI), in some months, the food and beverages inflation hit 87%.

Mahsa Amini was the 22-year-old Iranian woman whose death in Iran's 'morality police' custody last September sparked mass protests last year.

Saleh Nikbakht was summoned to the second branch of the Revolutionary Prosecutor's Office located in Evin prison in Tehran after he conducted interviews with journalists abroad.

According to Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN), Nikbakht, who has represented several dissidents before, was later temporarily released on bail until the next court hearing.

An informed source told KHRN that the accusations brought against Nikbakht is giving interviews about the case of his former and current clients including Loqman Moradi and Zanyar Moradi, and Mahsa Amini.

Nikbakht was summoned exactly six months after Mahsa Amini was killed after being arrested in the street for her attire.

The young woman from Saqqez came to Tehran with her family to visit her relatives, but she was arrested by the morality police on September 13 for “improper hijab”.

After receiving serious head injuries during the first two hours of her detention she was taken to a hospital in Tehran, but on September 16, it was announced that the doctors' efforts to save her had failed.

Mahsa Amini's death triggered widespread protests against the Islamic Republic, which posed the most serious challenge to clerical rule in 43 years.

But the White House also said that the United States is continuing to engage with Iran over how to get home Americans unjustly detained there.

"There's no deal. And the last thing that we want to do is give false hope to families that have been waiting for a long time for their loved ones to come home," White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters.

The Iranian foreign ministry once again said earlier Monday that a "written agreement has been signed by the official representative of the United States” though it did not specify who.

Three US dual nationals and possibly two permanent residents are held by Iran in what human rights organizations call hostage diplomacy by the Islamic Republic.

Tehran, which lost the chance to conclude a nuclear deal with the US and its European allies last September, has been repeatedly claiming that a prisoner release is imminent. It is believed that in case of an agreement over the hostages, the US would agree to the release at least $7 billion in Iran’s frozen funds held in South Korea.

It would be a politically difficult decision by the Biden administration to hand over money to the Iranian regime at a time when Tehran is supplying weapons to Russia and violently suppressing its own people.