Iran's Foreign Ministry has sanctioned a group of US officials and lawmakers over their alleged support for exiled Albania-based opposition group Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) organization.
The United States’ release of satellite imagery Saturday showing Russian officers in Iran in June and July reviewing drones (unmanned aerial vehicles, UAVs) reflects Washington’s disquiet over the Iran-Russia relationship. Jake Sullivan, the US National Security Adviser, said last Monday that Tehran planned to supply “several hundred UAVs, including weapons-capable UAVs, on an expedited timeline.”
But Washington is also uneasy with the continuing Russia ties of both Saudi Arabia, which coordinates oil supplies with Moscow through Opec+, and the United Arab Emirates, which has become a haven for Russian money. Israel too has resisted US-led efforts to impose sanctions on Moscow.
“The United States is going to remain an active engaged partner in the Middle East as the world grows more competitive, and the challenges we face more complex,” Joe Biden said at the summit of nine Arab states in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. “It’s only becoming clear to me how closely interwoven America’s interests are with the successes of the Middle East…We will not walk away and leave a vacuum to be filled by China, Russia or Iran.”
Biden repeated that the US would not allow Tehran to acquire a nuclear weapon, while his expressed preference for diplomacy came with a commitment not to deploy US forces. “Today, I’m proud to be able to say that the era of land wars in the region, wars involving huge numbers of American forces, is not underway,” he said.
The summit began with some Arab leaders concerned over Washington’s commitment to the region, especially since the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan last summer after a two-decade military presence. All hedge in one way or another. As well as coordinating global oil supplies with Russia, Riyadh has around $65 billion annual trade with China, and has since last year opened dialogue with Iran to reduce tensions.
Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud said Saturday he was unaware of any discussions on a Gulf-Israeli defense alliance, which some have speculated as the logical outcome of air-defense cooperation under US supervision.
‘Much diminished president'
Prince Turki Al-Faisal, a former Saudi intelligence chief and ambassador to the US, gave on US television Friday a withering assessment of Biden as a “much diminished president.” Saudi state media made light of Biden’s words at the summit Saturday over human rights and highlighted remarks from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman pointing to US hypocrisy over Jamal Khashoggi, murdered by the Saudis in 2018, given its own treatment of detainees in Iraq.
In another meeting, Biden invited Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, president of the United Arab Emirates, to visit the US – two days after reportedly the UAE July 14 arrested Asim Ghafoor, Khashoggi’s lawyer, while in transit in Dubai.
Biden’s differences with the Saudis over Iran were smoothed over. A joint statement noted Biden’s commitment to “supporting Saudi Arabia’s security and defense” and committed the two sides to “further deter Iran’s interference in the internal affairs of other countries, its support for terrorism through its armed proxies, and its efforts to destabilize the security and stability of the region.”
JCPOA or tougher action?
But while the statement “stressed the importance of preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon” it made no reference to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal (the JCPOA, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), which Biden remains committed to restoring in the face of Saudi opposition. Differences between Biden and the Israeli leaders over the need for tougher action against Iran broke through displays of mutual congratulations earlier in the week when the US president was in Israel.
Putin’s visit to Tehran, due Tuesday, will see a trilateral meeting with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. While Syria will be high on the agenda – under the ‘Astana format’ of the three countries – Erdogan has also been active in mediating between Russia and Ukraine.
Speaking Friday by phone with his Ukrainian counterpart Dymytro Kuleba, Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian reportedly expressed “opposition to Russia’s attack on Ukraine” in what appeared a shift in Tehran’s language if only for public consumption. There are also hopes in Tehran that Putin can offer assurances over Russian grain supplies disrupted by the Ukraine crisis.
The support for the government’s ever-tightening hijab rules came after a July-12 campaign by women’s rights advocates for a day without headscarves, dubbed “NO2Hijab”.
Ahmad Khatami who often leads the prayers in Tehran said on Thursday in Qeshm Island in southern Iran that many criticize Iran's hardliners for ignoring astronomical salaries and hefty embezzlements of state officials and minimizing Islamic values to covering women's hair.
He said "a sin is a sin whether it is showing a flock of a woman's hair or stealing public funds. Both not wearing the hijab and stealing from the public are sins." Khatami further charged that those who do not respect compulsory hijab are not devoted Muslims. While making the statement, he probably did not realize that in most Muslim countries governments do not impose hijab on women.
He claimed that "hijab is a social problem all over the world. It is not an individual responsibility so that some people could skip fulfilling." Khatami added that not observing the compulsory hijab rule leads to the decline of family values and creates social insecurity.
Criticizing those who say there is no official law against compulsory hijab in Iran, Khatami, a member of the Assembly of Experts, said that the Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution passed 300 articles of regulations in 2007. He said "Not covering women's hair is an idea propagated by the enemies of the revolution and the Islamic regime.
On Friday, imams in tens of Iranian cities including Mashhad, Gorgan, Hamadan and Esfahan promoted the party line about compulsory hijab and criticized the campaign against compulsory hijab as an action advised by Westerners. In Gorgan, Kazem Nourmofidi, the city's Friday prayers imam and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's representative to Golestan Province said in a comment with an implicit threat about cutting payments to women with bad hijab that women who work for the government and are paid by the government should observe the compulsory hijab rules more rigorously.
Meanwhile, in a bot-assisted campaign on social media, Iran's hardliners "amplified" and "trended" the Persian hashtags "Chaste Iran" with more than 56,000 tweets and "Gem of Chastity" with over 15,700 tweets. This comes while many Iranians on social media supported last week's campaign against compulsory hijab. Some of them on Friday morning harshly criticized former parliamentary speaker Mehdi Karroubi who spoke in support of compulsory hijab in a rare public appearance from his home where he has been under house arrest for 11 years for opposing the rigged presidential election in 2009.
Another reformist figure who came out in support of compulsory hijab, at the same time criticized the government's chastity squads for lining up "bad-hijab" women and taking their photograph like criminals. Former vice president for women affairs Massoumeh Ebtekar also claimed that Khamenei is against using violence against women and further opined that the Iranian Constitutional Law is silent about the issue of hijab.
In a move probably to cover herself for her minimal criticism of the government, Ms. Ebtekar, one of the 1979 hostage takers at the US Embassy in Tehran, said the policy to punish women for not wearing the compulsory hijab is a legacy of former ultraconservative President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's administration.
In a statement published on Saturday, the ministry listed 61 senators and representatives – democrat and republican -- as well as former and current officials for supporting the group, which the Islamic Republic calls ‘Monafeqin’, using the Quranic term that means ‘hypocrites’.
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, former National Security Advisor John Bolton, and Senators Ted Cruz and Cory Booker, as well as the chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bob Menendez, are on the list.
Several of the individuals were previously blacklisted by the Iranian government for other reasons.
Iran is furious about the group’s influence among Western , especially following the sentencing of a former Iranian jailor to life imprisonment by a Swedish court over executions of political prisoners in 1988, and some apparently by MEK.
Iran’s foreign ministry accused Sweden of giving into pressure by the MEK, that Tehran considers a terrorist organization. Most of the approximately 5,000 prisoners summarily executed in prisons were members of MEK serving their sentences.
The Islamic Republic holds the MEK responsible for bombings and assassinations in Iran in the 1980s and for its alliance with Saddam Hussein until his overthrow in 2003.
In April, Iran sanctioned 24 more Americans in a largely symbolic move, as months of talks to revive the 2015 nuclear deal have stalled.
In a similar move announced in January, Iran imposed sanctions on 51 Americans, many of them from the US military, over the 2020 killing of General Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike in Iraq.
