Trump Offensive Leaves Iran’s Hardliners Ascendant as Poll Nears

By Golnar Motevalli and Arsalan Shahla

After a dozen years as speaker of Iran’s parliament, half of them allied with President Hassan Rouhani as he reached out to the West, Ali Larijani is bowing out.

It’s been a tumultuous reign, book-ended by devastating U.S. sanction regimes. But his decision not to contest February 21 national assembly elections is more than a hard-earned career change. Those who backed Rouhani when Iran negotiated the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, including the influential 62-year-old Larijani, stand fatally weakened as the accord crumbles under President Donald Trump’s economic offensive and Tehran’s tit-for-tat reprisals.

The U.S. “maximum pressure” campaign weakened the position of Iran’s reformists, according to one of their number, Jalal Mirzaei.

“Things were going well,” Mirzaei said in Vienna this month as he attended an OPEC meeting. Then “Mr. Trump became president.”

As a result, more than six years after Iranians opted for change under Rouhani, arch-conservatives are ascendant, dominating the field of favored ballot candidates. The consequences for Iran and regional security are substantial.

On the Backfoot

“We’re in a situation where the more reasonable voices calling for a much more open Iran which was pro-diplomacy are fast losing ground to hardliners,” said Ellie Geranmayeh, deputy head of the Middle East and North Africa program at the European Council of Foreign Relations.

The Trump administration sought to weaken Iran, which he blamed for stirring regional strife and exporting extremism, in part by alienating Iranians from their leaders. His administration pointed to last month’s protests and a deadly security crackdown as evidence the sanctions strategy is working.

To further its aims, the U.S. might welcome power consolidated in the hands of ultra-conservatives, said Geranmayeh, if that undermines European resolve to maintain ties with Iran.

But for many observers, the electoral realignment’s more likely to extend the standoff. After all, encouraging Iran to accept greater curbs on its nuclear and missile programs for sanctions to be lifted becomes harder if the result is to sideline the people who might be willing to make the case for concessions.

While Iranian leaders have mostly remained united in opposing negotiations with the U.S. until it removes sanctions, two attempts by French President Emmanuel Macron to kickstart talks showed promise. The second foundered after a September attack on Saudi Arabian oil facilities, which Washington blamed on Iran, hardened positions.

‘Gravely Damaged’

“By undermining Rouhani’s most important achievement, Trump gravely damaged his presidency and popularity,” said Ali Vaez, senior analyst at the International Crisis Group. “What has been fatally damaged in the process is not just pro-engagement Iranian politicians, but the whole concept of engagement with the West.”

The 16,145 people registered to contest 290 seats in parliament represent the narrow spectrum of Iranian politics. But the most well-known number among Rouhani’s fiercest critics, supporters of an unflinching interpretation of Iran’s Islamic laws with careers defined by distrust of the U.S. and the wider West.

They include ex-mayor of Tehran and former military officer Mohammad-Bagher Qalibaf; Vahid Yaminpour, a TV personality; and legal scholar and cleric Hamid Rasaei.

The most notable reformists standing are Rouhani’s former top legal adviser Shahindokht Molaverdi, and the president’s son-in-law. The current record number of 14 women lawmakers is likely to drop.

Secretary of State Michael Pompeo on December 2 said the Trump administration’s reliance on sanctions to achieve goals in places like Iran and Venezuela had been “incredibly effective.” Tehran has fewer resources to conduct a regional “terror campaign,” he said.

Collision Course

Yet a lurch to the right in Iran risks emboldening the security services and their proxy forces in war zones such as Yemen and Syria, raising the chances of a confrontation, orchestrated or unplanned, with the U.S. just as its Gulf partners want to deescalate tensions.

And it could overwhelm the government with “monthly and even weekly interrogations of ministers and impeachment efforts,” said Geranmayeh. Targets will include Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh, one of Rouhani’s most effective technocrats who has longstanding links to reformers, and whom hardliners in parliament are currently trying to impeach.

The government had lost support before Trump exited the nuclear deal last year, for failing to deliver the jobs and better pay the accord promised. Other Iranians, dismayed over no progress in delivering greater social freedoms, lost patience.

As a U.S. ban on critical oil exports tipped the economy into recession, the government’s popularity dived.

Low Turnout

The slump is expected to reduce turnout in February, boosting hardliners whose supporters traditionally vote under instruction from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Mohammadali Abtahi, a reformist cleric jailed during unrest that followed 2009’s disputed presidential election, told Shargh newspaper that “unpopular” conservatives would “emerge as victorious only if turnout is low.”

He’s not the only moderate to speak out. In a statement read by supporters, former President Mohammad Khatami, whose words can’t be reported in Iran due to a ban, told a December 12 Tehran rally that the only alternative to an Islamic Republic that honored its original founding principles was a dictatorship.

Others present called on Khamenei to overhaul an opaque council able to disqualify election candidates with little accountability, as well as to avoid using decrees—such as the one that triggered November’s violence—to bypass parliamentary oversight.

As for Larijani, Iran’s former top nuclear negotiator may be taking a step back to consider a bid for the presidency. But much of that would depend on the fate of the nuclear deal and whether Trump himself wins another term next year.

Seething Unrest

For now, as he nears the end of his tenure, Larijani still has the task of refereeing a majority-moderate parliament that’s using whatever time it has left to amend the gasoline policy.

In Tehran, where an acrid smog hung over commuters, first-time voter Amirali, 20, dismissed the system as corrupt.

“Somebody comes along with the promise of a better future and people fall for their words,” he said, asking not to be identified due to the sensitivity of speaking to foreign media.

The spark for the protests was a surprise decision to hike gasoline prices and introduce rationing. Demonstrations swept through the cities of Tabriz, Isfahan and Mashhad, and then spread to Tehran as the city was cloaked by a sudden snowfall.

Unverified mobile-phone footage showed clashes between protesters and security forces. Authorities imposed an unprecedented internet blackout and it’s still not clear how many people were killed: death tolls range from an initial 12 reported by officials—a number that hasn’t been updated—to an estimate of more than 200 by Amnesty International.

The violence underscored moderates’ perilous position with less than two years left of Rouhani’s second and last term.

“The most important thing that brings people out to vote is hope,” said Zanganeh, in what could turn out to be a grim prophesy. “And the thing that drives them away is hopelessness.”

Photo: IRNA

U.S. Weighs More Iran Sanctions Over Potential Trade With Europe

By Nick Wadhams

The Trump administration is weighing sanctions against the Iranian financial body set up as a go-between for humanitarian trade with Europe, a move likely to sever the economic and humanitarian lifeline that France, Germany and the U.K. have sought to create for Tehran.

The U.S. measures would target the Special Trade and Finance Institute, which Iran established as a counterpart to the European mechanism known as Instex, according to a senior administration official who asked not to be identified discussing internal deliberations.

The official said the STFI is essentially an extension of Iran’s central bank, which already is covered by U.S. sanctions and, according to the administration, hasn’t implemented minimum global safeguards against money laundering and terrorism financing.

European countries established Instex in January to help shield limited trade with Iran from U.S. sanctions imposed after President Donald Trump withdrew from the multinational Iran nuclear deal a year ago. The new sanctions, if they take effect, would probably derail faltering European efforts to sustain some trade with Iran by avoiding the use of U.S. dollars or the American financial system.

Such a move—still in the early planning stages—would exacerbate divisions with European nations that have chafed against the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran. It would be the latest effort meant to force the Islamic Republic back to the negotiating table to discuss a deal stronger than the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the 2015 agreement that limited Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.

“If they are looking at sanctioning STFI, you’re essentially trying to kill INSTEX through the back door,” said Ellie Geranmayeh, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, referring to the Iranian body. “If the U.S. were to take action that kills INSTEX on arrival, my sense is there will be even more political backing in Europe to oppose the U.S.”

The sanctions deliberations come as German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas visits Tehran. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said Monday the two were having “frank talks” about how Iran could still get the economic benefits it expected by agreeing to the nuclear accord.

Yet in a tacit acknowledgment of the effectiveness of U.S. sanctions, European nations have significantly scaled back their ambition for the mechanism, saying trade through it would be limited only to transactions covering humanitarian goods.

U.S. sanctions against Iran already include carve-outs for humanitarian transactions. But European nations argue that INSTEX is needed to provide European companies and banks stronger assurances that they won’t be hit by U.S. sanctions even if they limit themselves to humanitarian purposes.

While the INSTEX mechanism is relatively obscure and would probably be used in limited cases, its opponents say that letting it survive could create a powerful economic tool later that could deal a blow to the effectiveness of U.S. sanctions more broadly.

One possibility, they say, is that Trump could lose re-election in 2020 and a Democratic president could look the other way as European nations used INSTEX for a wider range of trade with Iran, even as sanctions remained in place.

Another possibility is that other nations, including American adversaries, could use INSTEX as a model in the future and avoid the U.S. financial system entirely.

“The development of INSTEX is really worrying for U.S. sanction policy in the long run,” said Emma Ashford, a research fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington. “INSTEX sets up a framework other countries can use in the future.”

Officials at the State Department and the National Security Council declined to comment on the possibility of new sanctions.

Nuclear Deal

Punishing the STFI could doom INSTEX because it raises the possibility of sanctions risk to anyone who’s a part of the European mechanism. The initiative drives home a letter sent by the U.S. Treasury Department in early May to Per Fischer, the president of INSTEX, arguing that the financial body could face sanctions.

European officials say that establishing INSTEX is imperative to keep Iran abiding by the nuclear deal, which they credit with restraining the Islamic Republic’s nuclear capabilities. They’re especially eager to get it up and running before early July, when Iran has threatened to abandon the accord unless it sees greater benefits from abiding by its terms.

Visa Restrictions

The U.S. has sent conflicting signals about its attitude toward INSTEX, with some officials taking a hard line and others saying it could be acceptable. During a stop in Berlin on May 31, Secretary of State Michael Pompeo said the vehicle was “unproblematic” as long as it’s used to facilitate trade in humanitarian goods and other transactions the U.S. has exempted from sanctions.

Yet Republican hawks in the administration and Congress disagree, saying that channels for humanitarian trade with Iran already exist. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas is considering a draft bill that threatens sanctions against the European and Iranian finance vehicles.

Skeptics point out that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, covered by existing sanctions, has used humanitarian front companies in the past.

The risk of crushing INSTEX now is that the U.S. could face an even greater backlash if it closes off an avenue for legitimate humanitarian trade, according to Suzanne Maloney, deputy director of the foreign policy program at the Brookings Institution.

“It does call into question what the long-term strategy here is,” Maloney said. “If there’s no room for humanitarian aid for Iran, literally no viable mechanisms for facilitating those transactions, then clearly this is purely a punitive strategy and one that is intended to wreak maximum havoc on the Iranian population.”

Photo: IRNA

Iran Snap Nuclear Inspections Jump as Tensions With U.S. Rise

Snap inspections at Iranian nuclear facilities jumped last year, underscoring the wide-reaching ability of international monitors to access potential sites that could feed clandestine research.

The finding was included in the International Atomic Energy Agency’s latest Safeguards Implementation Report, which is circulating among nuclear-security officials as the specter of another Middle Eastern conflict rises. Europe in particular has found itself squeezed between hostile governments in Washington and Tehran after the U.S. left the nuclear deal and slapped sanctions on Iran.

According to a copy of the restricted report published this week and obtained by Bloomberg News, inspectors deployed in Iran conducted a record number of so-called complementary accesses for a third year running in 2018. Almost 400 inspectors spent some 1,867 person-days combing Iranian sites and triggered more than three surprise visits a month.

“These snap inspections are a reflection of the concern, particularly among Europeans, that Iran would ramp up nuclear work in a clandestine fashion after the U.S. left the nuclear deal,” said Ellie Geranmayeh, a senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Iran on Wednesday warned that it would abandon some elements of the 2015 accord if European nations failed to come up with ways to protect banking and oil business within 60 days. A day later the U.S., which left the agreement a year ago and is sending a carrier strike force to the Persian Gulf, piled on more penalties.

The escalation is disconcerting to non-proliferation officials who see the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action between Iran and world powers as a model agreement, one that bestowed unprecedented powers and access to international monitors.

The agreement “amounts to the most robust verification system in existence anywhere in the world,” IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano said last month in Washington after meeting with U.S. officials.

Since the deal came into force in January 2016, IAEA inspectors have issued 14-straight reports showing that Iran has remained within the parameters of the deal.

That could change during the third quarter, after the U.S. revoked two waivers that permitted Iran to ship out enriched uranium and heavy water. Delivering his response to a year of U.S. pressure, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Wednesday that recent enriched-uranium stockpiles would exceed limits if the country isn’t allowed to send its inventories of the heavy metal overseas.

Four years of IAEA verification, amounting to more than 8,000 inspection days and more than 100 snap inspections, have cost about 85.5 million euros ($96 million), or about three-fifths the cost of a single F-35 fighter jet made by Lockheed Martin Corp.

“We’re seeing the cost of keeping peace through this diplomatic accord far cheaper than the cost of a potential military confrontation,” according to Geranmayeh, who advises EU governments. “That’s something to consider for a cost conscious U.S. president that complains about ‘forever wars’. The cost of the deal is a drop in the ocean.”

Photo: Bloomberg