Iran preparing to vanquish ISIL
After a week-long lull, almost, Tehran has shifted gear in its rhetoric and approach to the crisis in Iraq and Syria. The innuendos and dark hints in the Iranian statements so far have given way to open criticism of the Saudi Arabian backing for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant [ISIL].
Two prominent members of the Majlis commission on foreign and security policies lashed out at Riyadh — “Saudi Arabia is the spiritual, material and ideological supporter of the ISIL and the Saudi King had tasked the country’s former intelligence chief [Prince Bandar] with a special mission to support the ISIL.” (Mohammad Hassan Asafari).
It is extremely rare that King Abdullah is nailed by name in an Iranian statement. Again, another prominent MP Mohammad Saleh Jokar implicitly warned Riyadh that it is throwing stones from a glass house — “Instead of interfering in Iraq’s affairs and implementing the US plots, Saudi Arabia had better deal with its own internal affairs.” The Iranian line is that the succession struggle in the Saudi royal family is becoming acute.
Significantly, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei repeated an expression which was coined by Imam Khomeini in the early years of the Iranian revolution to refer to Saudi Arabia as a poodle of the US and a covert accomplice of Israel. Khamenei said while addressing a group of Quran reciters in Teheran on Sunday that there is a difference between “American Islam” and true Islam — “The American Islam, despite having Islamic appearance and name, complies with despotism and Zionism… and totally serves the goals of Zionism and the US.”
Meanwhile, the open support expressed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the idea of an independent Kurdistan state in northern Iraq — apart from the visits by the US secretary of state John Kerry and the British Foreign Secretary William Hague to Erbil last week — have alerted Tehran to the calibrated Anglo-American strategy (with Israeli participation) to create a petrodollar state right on Iran’s western borders.
Tehran closely monitors the strong Israeli intelligence presence in Erbil. In a rare statement, Tehran has frontally challenged the emergence of an independent Kurdistan. DFM Hossein Amir Abdollahian counseled the Kurdish leadership that it will be unwise to pursue secession. A prominent MP criticized Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani by name and his stated intentions to annex Kirkuk.
Barzani is close to Israeli intelligence. The heightened Israeli intelligence activity in Kurdistan region and the move by Netanyahu to wade into intra-Iraqi differences would partly explain the emergent possibility that Tehran may consider resuming assistance for Hamas.
Tehran’s ties with Hamas atrophied in the recent years following Khaled Mashaal’s catastrophic decision to leave Damascus and take up residence in Doha, aligning himself with the regional countries that were pushing for regime change in Syria. No doubt, Mashaal is a sadder and wiser man today, as apparent from his letter to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani seeking help.
Furthermore, Tehran has made an important move on the diplomatic front. DFM Abdollahian left for Moscow in the weekend for consultations with his Russian counterpart regarding the Iraq-Syria developments, especially the need to frustrate the US strategm.
A high degree of Russian-Iranian coordination is apparent at the talks in Moscow. To be sure, Iran welcomes the Russian move to rush jet aircraft and military advisors to Baghdad. The objective of the two countries will be to deny Washington the prerogative to dictate terms to the Iraqi government.
Interestingly, Moscow responded to the request for help from the incumbent prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, notwithstanding the desperate attempts by Washington to remove him from power and replace him with a pliant figure as the head of government in Baghdad. The Western media have written off Maliki as a burnt-out case, but Moscow and Tehran could be seeing things differently.
Again, Tehran has concluded that the ISIL saga in Iraq is a covert US-Saudi enterprise and Qatar has been cut out of it. (The Saudi-Qatari ties are in a state of chill.) The cabal that met Kerry in Paris on June 26 to discuss the road map for Iraq and Syria included Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Jordan, but Qatar was conspicuous by its absence.
Thus, Rouhani picked up the phone and had a discussion regarding Iraq and the ISIL challenge with the Emir of Qatar on Sunday. Rouhani proposed that Iran and Qatar should join hands to fight terrorism in Iraq. Equally, Tehran has reiterated its support for Syria’s Bashar in a phone call by Iran’s First Vice-President Eshaq Jahangiri to Syrian prime minister Wael al-Halqi on Monday.
The upshot of these moves on the diplomatic front is that Iran hopes to deal a crushing defeat on the ISIL. A mobilization to this end is clearly underway. Iran will not allow the victory in Syria to be challenged by the defeated parties via the ISIL push in Iraq; nor will it countenance any reversal of the Shi’ite empowerment in Iraq through a backdoor ‘Balkanisation’ of the country. In sum, Teheran is not prepared to compromise on its vital interests and core concerns in Syria and Iraq simply because the P5+1 and Iran talks on the nuclear issue is nearing homestretch.
Posted in Diplomacy, Politics.
Tagged with Iraq, ISIL, Kurdistan, Syria.
By M K Bhadrakumar – July 1, 2014
