Iran Digest Week of June 30- July 7
/AIC’s Iran digest project covers the latest developments and news stories published in Iranian and international media outlets. This weekly digest is compiled by associate Samuel Howell. Please note that the news and views expressed in the articles below do not necessarily reflect those of AIC.
US- Iran Relations
Iran's Revolutionary Guards seize commercial ship in Gulf - U.S. Navy
Iran's Revolutionary Guards "forcibly seized" a commercial ship in international waters in the Gulf on Thursday and the vessel was possibly involved in smuggling, a U.S. Navy spokesperson said.
The U.S. Navy had monitored the situation and decided not to make any further response, U.S. 5th Fleet spokesperson Commander Tim Hawkins said.
British maritime security company Ambrey said it was aware of an attempted seizure by Iranian forces of a small Tanzanian flagged tanker, around 59 nautical miles northeast of the Saudi Arabian port city of Dammam.
(Reuters)
'It's not over yet': Artists work to keep Iran's protests in view
Mahsa Amini peers out from a mural that covers an entire building side in a Washington, D.C. alley, her head and shoulders floating over the words "Woman, Freedom, Life," and a lion and lioness flanking her.
The mural's painter is Rodrigo Pradel, a Chilean immigrant. He had no links to Iran or the large protests that erupted there when Amini, a young Kurdish woman, died in police custody last year. But it was his friend, Yasi Farazad, who inspired him to bring the movement half a world away to the streets of D.C., after seeing a similar piece in Los Angeles.
The project was a challenge. Unable to participate in the city's official mural program, Farazad had to seek out a site on her own, and finally found one with the help of a friend in a building that was owned by an Iranian American man. Pradel painted the mural in under 20 hours.
(NPR)
Economy
Iran Joins Shanghai Cooperation Pact, Hoping To Reduce Isolation
Iran joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) during the group’s virtual summit Tuesday, representing a foreign policy achievement amid its isolation.
This is the first time Tehran joins a regional pact since the 1979 revolution and the establishment of the Islamic Republic.
The SCO also known as the Shanghai Pact is a Eurasian political, economic and security alliance formed in 2001 with Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, with one of its goals being cooperation against extremism. India and Pakistan joined the pact in 2017 and Belarus is also slated to become a member.
Iran Says A Meeting In Vienna With Saudis Discussed Investments
Iranian Oil Minister Javad Owji and Saudi Arabia counterpart Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman met on the sidelines of the OPEC conference in Vienna on Wednesday.
However, the source of the news is Iran’s government news agency IRNA, and so far, there have been no reports from the Saudi side on the meeting.
The two countries renewed diplomatic ties in March after seven years of animosity, in a deal negotiated by China, opening the way to potential bilateral cooperation in different fields.
Regional Politics
The Wagner Mutiny Could Strengthen Iran in Syria
As Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mutiny in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, began on June 23, Russian military police in Syria apprehended at least four of the Wagner Group’s top leaders and flew them to the Hmeimim air base on the country’s west coast as a precautionary measure. Multiple sources told Foreign Policy via messages over an encrypted messaging app that all were still being kept at a closed facility at Hmeimim; however, no public indication of their whereabouts has yet been made.
Home to several thousand Russian soldiers and contractors, Hmeimim is Russia’s command and control center in Syria and the logistics headquarters for all Wagner operations abroad.
With its two large landing strips, it is the largest Russian facility outside the former Soviet Union capable of servicing and refueling heavy aircraft transporting large quantities of weapons and personnel. Wagner flights to Libya, Mali, Sudan, the Central African Republic, and even Venezuela depart from Hmeimim via Russian defense ministry aircraft before arriving at their final destinations. Should the Kremlin deny Wagner access to this facility, Prigozhin’s global empire would grind to a halt.
Global Relations
Years After Iranian Missiles Downed a Passenger Jet, a Suit Seeks Answers
On a clear January morning in 2020, Ukraine Airlines Flight 752 was struck by two Iranian missiles just three minutes after leaving an airport in Tehran, killing all 176 passengers.
Ever since, families of the victims have asked for a credible explanation but have been rebuffed by the Iranian authorities. On Wednesday, four of the countries whose citizens perished in the disaster filed suit at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, requesting Iran provide a full account, to acknowledge its responsibility and pay “full compensation” for the material and moral damages.
The four parties to the suit — Britain, Canada, Sweden and Ukraine — contend that Iran has failed “to conduct an impartial, transparent and fair criminal investigation” but instead has “withheld or destroyed evidence” and “threatened and harassed the families of the victims.”
UK to sanction Iran after credible threats from regime
The government has announced plans to sanction Iranian officials behind what it called hostile activities in the UK.
The foreign secretary said since January 2022 there had been 15 credible threats by Iran's regime to kill or kidnap Britons or UK-based people.
Under existing legislation, the UK can sanction Iranians for human rights violations or nuclear proliferation activities within the Islamic republic.
(BBC)
Iran and Sudan look to restore diplomatic ties
Iran and Sudan said on Thursday they were planning to restore ties after the Iranian foreign minister met his acting Sudanese counterpart for the first time since diplomatic relations between the two countries were severed seven years ago.
Sudan's foreign ministry said in a statement that the meeting, on the sidelines of a Non-Aligned Movement meeting in Azerbaijan's capital Baku, had discussed restoring relations "as soon as possible".
Sudan's acting Foreign Minister, Ali Sadeq, also thanked Iran for supplying humanitarian aid through the Iranian Crescent during the conflict between Sudan's army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
(Reuters)
Analysis
Iran Is the Middle East's Most Dangerous Tinderbox
By: Ian Bremmer
Under pressure from Western sanctions, Iran is actively in search of new international trade and investment partners, and it has made some progress. In particular, a Chinese-brokered deal to normalize relations with regional rival Saudi Arabia has created commercial opportunities, and its willingness to provide Russia with drones and ammunition for use in Ukraine has created new openings too. It also helps Iran’s government that the nationwide surge of protests that followed the death in police custody last September of a young woman arrested for wearing her headscarf too loosely has largely died down, thanks mainly to the willingness of authorities to arrest large numbers of people and to execute a handful of them publicly.
But Iran’s leaders know their reprieve from pressure will prove temporary. Economic strain continues. Thanks mainly to sanctions, Iran’s currency has lost more than 90% of its value against the dollar over the past decade, and price inflation remains above 40%. Benefits from better relations with the Saudis will take time to materialize, and the rapprochement will likely remain tentative. President Ebrahim Raisi’s “Turn to the East” strategy is intended to bring major new infrastructure investment from both Russia and, more importantly, China, but Russia’s own economic outlook remains perilous, a wartime partnership with the Kremlin will bring new sanctions on Iran, and the Chinese can buy large volumes of heavily discounted oil from Russia, leaving Iran out in the cold.
America’s Foes Are Joining Forces
By: Peter Beinart
The Biden administration recently made two grim announcements: Iran is helping to manufacture drones for Russia. China operates a spy base in Cuba.
The message is clear: America’s foes are joining forces. They now constitute what Washington’s influential Center for a New American Security recently called a new “axis of authoritarians,” which threatens U.S. interests from East Asia to the Caribbean and Eastern Europe to the Persian Gulf. The phrase implies that what binds the governments of Russia, China, Iran and Cuba is their common aversion to democracy. For a Washington foreign-policy class that often depicts America’s geopolitical struggles as contests between freedom and tyranny, it’s an appealing narrative.
But there’s a problem. Only a few years ago, the governments of Cuba and Iran — which had the same authoritarian political systems back then — were pursuing closer ties to Washington. They didn’t swerve toward Russia and China because they realized they hate democracy. They swerved because the United States spurned those overtures and drove them into the arms of America’s great-power foes. Under both former President Donald Trump and President Biden, Washington has helped create the very anti-American partnerships it now bemoans, which is exactly what it did during the last Cold War.
