Politico: Trump’s better deal with Iran looks a lot like Obama’s

At times, analysts and former officials say, it sounds like Trump wants to strike a deal that essentially mirrors the agreement that his White House predecessor inked — even if he’d never be willing to admit it. Iranian officials seem willing to egg him on, saying they’ll talk so long as Trump lifts the sanctions he’s imposed on them and returns to the 2015 Iran deal. And as European ministers warn that the existing deal is nearly extinct, Trump may feel like he is backed into a corner and running out of options. [...]

He’s said he’s “not looking for war,” wants to talk to Iran without preconditions and isn’t interested in regime change. He called off a military strike on Iran over its downing of an unmanned U.S. drone, overriding the advice of several top aides. His main public demand is that Iran not build nuclear weapons. In return, Trump has offered to help revive Iran’s sanctions-battered economy. [...]

Several European officials express astonishment at the audacity of the Trump administration demanding that Iran adhere to the deal when the U.S. the one who breached the agreement in the first place. Some said they were not surprised that Iran may have taken actions in the Persian Gulf as payback for the U.S. abandonment of the deal. 

Europeans “know that the original sin causing the current escalation in the Gulf is the U.S. violation of the Iran nuclear deal,” said Nathalie Tocci, an adviser to European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini. “At the same time, they are terribly concerned about the escalation and the threat it poses to the Middle East and to Europe itself.” [...]

Perhaps sensing this, Trump on Tuesday went out of his way to note that he didn’t want to oust the government in Tehran. “We're not looking, by the way, for regime change because some people say [we are] looking for regime change,” he said. “We're not looking for regime change.”

read the article or listen to the podcast

Today in Focus: Is John Bolton trying to drive Trump to war with Iran?

John Bolton, who has been called “the most dangerous man in the world”, was not Donald Trump’s first pick for his national security adviser. But after a series of resignations, he was plucked from a life of Fox News appearances to reprise his career as the foremost military hawk in the US. Now he has his sights set on Iran and has pushed for a buildup of US military assets in the Gulf.

The Guardian’s world affairs editor, Julian Borger, tells Anushka Asthana that as tensions rise, so do the chances of an accidental – or deliberate – escalation towards war. The echoes of the drumbeat to war in Iraq in 2003 are all too apparent, and it was Bolton’s role in that crisis that prompted a Guardian columnist to attempt to make a citizen’s arrest of him in the tranquil surroundings of the Hay literary festival in 2008. George Monbiot describes how he came out second best from that encounter.

Also today: the Guardian has updated its style guidance for journalists writing and talking about the environment. Instead of “climate change” the preferred terms are now “climate emergency, crisis or breakdown” and “global heating” is favoured over “global warming”. The editor-in-chief, Katharine Viner, explains why precision in language is important in reporting on the climate and why the changes have been made now.

listen to the podcast

Associated Press: Analysis: Iran supreme leader comments signal strategy shift

Since first publicly accepting the nuclear deal, under which Iran agreed to limit its enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions, Khamenei issued a warning not to trust the U.S. A letter he sent to Rouhani in October 2015 said the deal had “numerous ambiguities and structural weaknesses that could inflict big damage on the present and the future of the country.” [...]

Their immediate ouster, however, is unlikely. Khamenei had similarly worsening relations with hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and reformist President Mohammad Khatami in their second terms. Zarif himself publicly tendered his resignation in February after not attending a surprise meeting in Tehran between Syrian President Bashar Assad and Khamenei, only later to agree to stay on. [...]

Analysts believe Iran in part may be playing for time, waiting to see if Trump will be re-elected in 2020. Rouhani’s own term runs out in 2021, allowing Khamenei to swap out “discredited negotiators” like Zarif, said Mehdi Khalaji, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who is Shiite theologian by training, Khamenei also could send negotiators from the Guard, rather than from the presidency, to allow them to negotiate on Iran’s ballistic missile program, which the paramilitary force controls.

read the article

Haaretz: Does Iran Really Want to Destroy Israel?

Not all Iranian analysts bought this explanation. The Iranian daily Kayhan accused Zarif of distorting Khomeini’s words and of departing from the goals of the Islamic revolution, which, the paper said, includes the destruction of Israel. Other commentators quoted other Iranian leaders who spoke of Israel as a cancer that must be destroyed and Khamenei’s statement from 2012 that Iran would assist any country or group that would fight the Zionist state. [...]

The moods, criticism of the regime or political and diplomatic analyses published in Iran, which do not follow in the spirit of official declarations, hardly ever reach the public in Israel. “We read the Israeli newspapers translated into English. We know who the Israeli politicians are, we follow the Netanyahu investigations and try to understand Israeli society,” an Iranian journalist wrote Haaretz, communication with whom is by roundabout emails. But in Israel, only a handful of scholars and intelligence people read the Iranian newspapers, although some of the important ones appear online in English or Arabic. [...]

Not all Iranians are busy all day long with nuclear bombs, missiles, Israel, Hezbollah or sanctions. Since November, the musical “Les Miserables” has filled the theaters in Tehran every day of the week, although the cost of a ticket – $20 – is prohibitive for most Iranians. The actresses are not permitted to uncover their hair, their singing is accompanied by background voices so they are not singing solo, which is against the law. But the director, Hossein Parsaee, has seen to impressive lighting, artificial snow and a live orchestra. He is even proud of the fact that Khamenei has given his stamp of approval to the show when he said: “Victor Hugo’s book is wonderful. A book about love and compassion.”

read the article

Foreign Policy: Iran and the United States Can be Friends

Top figures such as Rouhani or Zarif who dare question this orthodoxy face severe censure from inside the regime. When Rouhani was in New York in September to attend the United Nations General Assembly, his entourage went to great lengths to avoid even an accidental meeting between Rouhani and Trump. It was likewise clear from Rouhani’s Sept. 25 U.N. speech that he was fixed on one thing only: reassuring his hard-line rivals in Tehran that he had no intention of courting an American president whose administration has put forward a list of 12 concessions Tehran would have to make before sanctions can be removed. [...]

Rouhani—understanding both pressures—is looking for ways to take the America issue off the table. Rather than blaming the United States for the poor state of relations between the two countries, he has called on Trump not to be misled by the Israelis, the Saudis, and the Iranian opposition in exile. The subtext is clear: Third-party actors are spoiling relations between Tehran and Washington. It might seem like a cop-out, and it is, but it is also an overture of sorts. In fact, Rouhani and other first-generation Islamist revolutionary leaders who are guilty of having deliberately manufactured an American boogeyman are best placed to start looking for ways to break this spell. [...]

But one week later, it appears that all the goodwill was lost. Pro-Khomeini militiamen returned to the U.S. Embassy not as the rescuers, but now joining forces with the assailants. The attack had little to do with dogma; if the presence of the United States in Tehran was doctrinally anathema, it makes little sense that the Islamists would have waited almost 10 months after the shah had left Iran before storming, and this time holding on to, the U.S. Embassy. Rather than ideology, it was growing competition for power in Tehran that paved the way for this event. [...]

At the time, three benefits stood out. First, the hostage crisis predictably led to the resignation and later marginalization of the “liberal” Islamists who surrounded Bazargan and were more loyal to him than the supreme leader. Second, the seizure suddenly put the United States on the defensive and forced it to reckon with Khomeini as the Shah’s only true successor. Third, the bulk of the radical leftist youth initially supported the take-over of the embassy, allowing Khomeini to peel off support from rival revolutionary factions.

read the article

Spiegel: The Nuclear Agreement Is Not a Love Affair'

Zarif: The Europeans and other signatories must take action to compensate for the effects of the U.S. sanctions. In May, they presented us with a package. That was an important commitment. Now, it must be translated into action. The most important thing is that Europe shouldn't do it for Iran, but for its own sovereignty and its long-term economic interests. [...]

Zarif: Our first priority is to ensure that Iran can continue to sell reasonable amounts of oil and to bring the proceeds back to Iran. In addition, we are interested in investment and cooperation in a variety of areas like science, technology and trade. But the litmus test is oil and banking. [...]

Zarif: Europe has said that the nuclear agreement is in their own security interest. Europe must be prepared to pay for its security. Nothing is for free. Europeans must decide whether they are prepared to put their money where their mouth is. [...]

Zarif: We have never threatened Israel with violence. We say that the policies pursued by the Zionist regime will lead to its annihilation. That isn't something that we will do. [...]

Zarif: Iranian foreign policy is determined neither by me nor by Mr. Soleimani, rather by the Supreme National Security Council. That is where discussions are held and decisions are made. When we negotiated the nuclear agreement, it was also said: Zarif is just a mouthpiece, the deal will never be implemented because the government has no power. But we did implement the agreement.

read the article

Haaretz: Trump’s Talk of Sanctions Is a Dead-end. What He’s Really Pushing Is War Against Iran

Netanyahu himself has been hoping for regime change since 2002, when he mistakenly predicted an invasion of Iraq would have a spillover effect on Iran leading to regime change. [...]

While sanctions have had modest success in bringing adversaries to the negotiations table – most notably the Iran nuclear deal, democracies have tried and failed using sanctions to topple authoritarian regimes nearly 60 times between World War I and 2000, according to a long-term study. Examples range from Cuba and Panama to North Korea, Libya and Iran.  [...]

In most cases, the sanctions are lifted without achieving the desired effect. In some cases, partial success is achieved – sanctions are lifted in exchange for important, albeit partial, concessions by the regime under pressure. That is precisely what happened with Iran – in other words, the West extracted as much if not more from Iran than any other sanctions campaign in history. [...]

In some ways, Iran was already on a path to regime change. As the Iranian people saw how their leaders squandered the benefits of the lifting of sanctions on military exploits abroad, discontent was growing. It’s not for nothing that Iranian President Hassan Rohani leaked the budget that showed increases in military spending on the backs of social expenditures in order to mobilize the public to push for social reform. The Islamic regime’s legitimacy was beginning to slip away. 

read the article

Al Jazeera: Analysis: What's next for Iran?

In an effort to placate the Americans, Europe's leaders will be looking for concessions on Iran's ballistic missiles programme, and are likely to raise the issue of Tehran's support for President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthi rebels in Yemen. [...]

Iraq under Saddam Hussein invaded Iran shortly after the 1979 revolution. The US as well as many of Iran's Gulf Arab neighbours supported Hussein in the eight-year conflict.  [...]

Iranians say they still remember the sound of air raid sirens on the radio and on TV, whenever an Iraqi jet on a bombing run or an Iraqi ballistic missile would be spotted in the skies over an Iranian city. For eight long years, people here say they looked up at the skies in constant fear.

That conflict shaped the way Iran looks at national security issues. The country's collective trauma changed how civilian and military leaders make decisions about present-day defence policies. [...]

While the US pullout may have given Iran the moral high ground with regards to the nuclear deal, at home the Rouhani administration is in trouble. If Zarif's trip is unsuccessful in achieving even some minor measurable gain for Iran's economy, one MP predicts changes at the top.

read the article

The New Yorker: Rex Tillerson at the Breaking Point

It was through a Boy Scouts connection that he was chosen to be Secretary of State. From 2010 to 2012, Tillerson was the national president of the Boy Scouts of America, where he sat on the board with Robert M. Gates, the former Defense Secretary for George W. Bush and for Barack Obama. After quarterly meetings, Gates told me, he and Tillerson got together. “We would share a whiskey and talk about the world,” he said. (Exxon also engaged a consulting firm owned by Gates and another prominent Republican, Condoleezza Rice.) [...]

For years, as Exxon and others in the industry conducted a concerted lobbying effort against the legislation, Congress delayed acting on it. Then, in 2010, following the financial crisis, language calling for a new disclosure regulation, Rule 1504, was included in the Dodd-Frank legislation, which imposed reforms on banks and other financial institutions. Tillerson, as the C.E.O. of Exxon, went to Capitol Hill to argue against the rule, and met with one of the senators who supported it. According to a source with knowledge of the meeting, Tillerson said that if Exxon had to disclose payments to foreign governments it would make many of those governments unhappy—especially that of Russia, where Exxon was involved in multibillion-dollar projects. The senator refused to drop the rule, and Tillerson became visibly agitated. (Tillerson denies this.) “He got red-faced angry,” the source recalled. “He lifted out of his chair in anger. My impression was that he was not used to people with different views.” [...]

Determined to find new reserves, Tillerson demonstrated on several occasions that he was willing to engage in deals that were contrary to the foreign policy of the United States. The most intense conflicts arose when Exxon tried to do business in countries where the U.S. had imposed economic sanctions. According to senators and aides, and to documents filed with Congress, Exxon lobbied the U.S. government extensively to relax sanctions on Iran, which were designed to curtail its nuclear-weapons program. Exxon was also a member of USA Engage, a group that lobbied against the sanctions. [...]

In addition to imposing sanctions on the Russian government, the U.S. targeted Sechin and other senior officials close to Putin. Yet the relationship with Exxon continued. Company officials made a number of oil deals with Sechin, and, after Tillerson’s confirmation, applied for a waiver to the sanctions that prevented work in the Kara Sea. The Treasury Department subsequently fined Exxon two million dollars for the deals it made with Sechin, and denied its request for a waiver. “I was very pleased about that,” a former U.S. official who worked on Russia sanctions told me. “The integrity of the people at Treasury held up. It didn’t matter that Tillerson was Secretary of State.” [...]

But what Tillerson has proposed is far more ambitious than eliminating a few dozen jobs. He has suggested deep cuts for humanitarian aid and economic development—the whole range of initiatives designed to alleviate suffering and to advance America’s interests. His budget called for drastically reducing or completely dissolving programs to help refugees, deliver aid to countries hit by disaster, support fledgling democratic movements, protect women’s groups, and fight the spread of H.I.V. and aids. The proposed cuts to such foreign-aid programs total some $6.6 billion.

read the article