Seven English Editorial addressing Iran’s spread Of The Corona pandemic, The Neuclear pact – JCPOA- hazards & Fate & Its Use Of Venezuela/مقالات سبعة تتناول جريمة نشر الطيران الإيراني للإرهاب ولفيروس الكورونا واخطار الإتفاقية النووية مع إيران ومصيرها واستعمال إيران لفانزولا
An airplane of Mahan Air sits at the tarmac after landing at Sanaa International Airport in the Yemeni capital on March 1, 2015 a day after officials from the Shiite militia-controlled city signed an aviation agreement with Tehran. Western-backed President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi, who fled last weekend an effective house arrest by the Huthis in Sanaa, slammed the agreement as "illegal," according to an aide. AFP PHOTO / MOHAMMED HUWAIS (Photo credit should read MOHAMMED HUWAIS/AFP via Getty Images)
Seven English Editorial addressing Iran’s spread Of The Corona pandemic, The Neuclear pact – JCPOA- hazards & Fate & Its Use Of Venezuel مقالات سبعة تتناول جريمة نشر الطيران الإيراني للإرهاب ولفيروس الكورونا واخطار الإتفاقية النووية مع إيران ومصيرها واستعمال إيران لفانزولا
*Iran Accused of Spreading Coronavirus Throughout the Middle East/Con Coughlin/Gatestone Institute./May 07/2020 كون كوكلن/معهد كايتستون: إيران متهمة بنشر فيروس كورونا في الشرق الأوسط
*EU should sanction Iranian airlines exporting coronavirus and terror/Benjamin Weinthal/Mikhael Smits/Washington Examiner/May 07/2020 بنيامين وينثال: على الإتحاد الأروبي معاقبة شركات الطيران الإيرانية التي تصدر الإرهاب وفيرس الكورونا
*The Impact of Sanctions Two Years After U.S. Withdrawal From the Nuclear Deal/Saeed Ghasseminejad/Richard/Goldberg/FDD/May 07/2020 سعيد قاسم نجاد مع ريتشارد جولدبرج: مركز الدفاع عن الديمقراطية أثر العقوبات بعد عامين من انسحاب الولايات المتحدة من الاتفاق النووي مع إيران
*The JCPOA May Not See Its Five-Year Anniversary/Andrea Stricker/FDD/May 07/2020اندره ستركير: مركز الدفاع عن الديموقراطية: الإتفاقين النووية مع إيران قد لا ترى الذكرى الخامسة تلوقيعها
*Major US influence on Iranians sidelined by anti-Trump biasظAlireza Nader/FDD/May 07/2020 علي رضا نادر/مركز الدفاع عن الديمقراطية: التحيز ضد ترامب اضعف كثيرا نفوذ أميركا على إيران وحكامها
*The Impact of Sanctions Two Years After U.S. Withdrawal From the Nuclear Deal/Saeed Ghasseminejad/Richard/Goldberg/FDD/May 07/2020 سعيد قاسم نجاد مع ريتشارد جولدبرج: مركز الدفاع عن الديمقراطية أثر العقوبات بعد عامين من انسحاب الولايات المتحدة من الاتفاق النووي مع إيران
*Iran using Venezuela to advance its revolutionary interests/Dr. Majid Rafizadeh/May 07/2020 د. ماجد رافيزادا: إيران تستعمل فنزويلا للترويج لمصالح ثورتها
EU should sanction Iranian airlines exporting coronavirus and terror/Benjamin Weinthal/Mikhael Smits/Washington Examiner/May 07/2020 بنيامين وينثال: على الإتحاد الأروبي معاقبة شركات الطيران الإيرانية التي تصدر الإرهاب وفيرس الكورونا
Amid a global coronavirus pandemic, two Iranian airlines sanctioned by the United States for “secretly ferrying operatives, weapons, and funds” to Syria have flown dozens of times between China, Iran, and some of Europe’s biggest cities. Mahan Air and Iran Air have for too long escaped scrutiny from European lawmakers eager to improve ties with the regime in Tehran. Permanently denying Mahan and Iran Air landing rights would deprive their regime minders of terror funds, and cease ferrying passengers to and from the Middle East’s coronavirus hub.
The Islamic Republic of Iran is at the epicenter of the coronavirus epidemic. Some 97,000 people, including members of the regime’s senior leadership, have tested positive. According to a report from Germany’s Die Welt, Tehran’s leaders have been fabricating their official coronavirus death toll, with Western security sources and experts believing the real number is at least 4 times the reported number.
Iran, it’s worth noting, has no excuse for exposing its citizenry to added risk during this crisis. Despite a widespread U.S.-led sanctions efforts against Iran’s regime, humanitarian aid — food, medicine, and the like — is still permitted to enter the country. Reports show Iran has steadily imported aid without issue, despite regime protestations to the contrary. Iran’s health minister has admitted as much, toeing the party line but acknowledging sanctions had not hindered the import of essential medicine.
Flight records reviewed through tracking website FlightRadar24 show Iran’s explosion of cases may be linked to frequent trips between Tehran and China, where the Chinese Communist Party has for months lied about the severity of the crisis. Though the regime in Iran announced in January it would bar flights from China, that proved to be another lie. The State Department has pointed to 55 flights between Iran and China in February alone, and a review of flights early this week confirmed that Mahan Air is still flying between Tehran and cities across China. At present, flights between Iran and China are scheduled to continue into May.
The reason for these flights is no mystery. The regime in Iran prefers to fund global terror and brutally repress any domestic dissent rather than concentrate sufficient resources on this crisis. That profligate foreign spending makes maintaining good ties with the resource-rich and image-conscious autocrats in Beijing a national priority, whatever the cost. Although Iranian officials have good reason to suspect that Chinese workers in Qom are the likely source of the outbreak in Iran and that China has long lied about its case numbers, strategic considerations likely outweigh concern for local lives.
That the mullahs, like the CCP, care little for the truth or the well-being of its citizens is unsurprising. That major European nations would expose their citizens to the same flights and risks is. Though many European countries moved swiftly to curb flights from China, few acted to stop those from Iran. So long as China and Iran continue their robust air traffic, blocking one but not the other will do little good.
Mahan Air and Iran Air have been central to that spread. In March and April, the two airlines operated dozens of flights into the heart of Europe, with regular service to Spain, the United Kingdom, and Germany. In recent weeks, 50,000 Iranians traveled to Southeast Asia, Europe, or Canada, according to Die Welt. Of those, 1,000 went to Germany, and 900 to the U.K. Additional Iranians went elsewhere across Europe’s Schengen Area. In mid-April, the Italian Embassy in Iran announced Iran Air would be resuming direct flights from Tehran to Rome and Milan.
Perhaps most dangerously, the same aircrafts have flown to and from Iran, China, and Europe in rapid succession, threatening to transmit the virus between cities without requiring direct person-to-person transmission. For example, an Airbus A340 belonging to Mahan Air recently flew to and from Tehran, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Barcelona, and Istanbul. In late March, a Mahan Air pilot reportedly succumbed to the virus.
Some European nations have begun to respond to the danger posed by Mahan Air. France, in March 2019, banned Mahan Air for facilitating war crimes in Syria. Italy announced late last year it would follow suit. Germany, at U.S. Ambassador Richard Grenell’s urging, announced a similar policy last year on security grounds. Yet Iran Air, no better than Mahan Air, continued to service Germany for months and is again landing in Italy.
Tides may be turning. In April, Germany’s federal minister of health finally announced an immediate ban on flights from Iran. He called the territory controlled by the regime in Tehran a “high-risk area,” where the situation is “non-transparent.” With the help of Mahan and Iran Air, that lack of transparency has long enabled Tehran to export terrorism and misery to Syria, and now pandemic across Iran and into Europe with impunity. What more will Europe need to suffer at the hands of Mahan and Iran Air before its leaders shut them out for good?
*Benjamin Weinthal (@BenWeinthal) is a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where Mikhael Smits (@mikhaelsmits) is a research analyst in the Center on Military and Political Power. FDD is a Washington, D.C.-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
The Impact of Sanctions Two Years After U.S. Withdrawal From the Nuclear Deal/Saeed Ghasseminejad/Richard/Goldberg/FDD/May 07/2020 سعيد قاسم نجاد مع ريتشارد جولدبرج: مركز الدفاع عن الديمقراطية أثر العقوبات بعد عامين من انسحاب الولايات المتحدة من الاتفاق النووي مع إيران
Two years into President Donald Trump’s maximum pressure campaign against the Islamic Republic of Iran, U.S. sanctions – when enforced – have pushed Iran into a deep, multi-year recession, slashed the value of its currency, ratcheted up inflation, driven out foreign investors, and deprived the regime of tens of billions of dollars in revenue, especially from oil exports. This economic pressure is already translating into political pressure, which may force the regime to decide between its survival, on the one hand, and its nuclear ambitions and foreign wars on the other.
Iranian GDP surged by 12.5 percent in 2016, the first year that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was in effect, and enjoyed solid growth of 3.7 percent in the deal’s second year. A sharp reversal followed the U.S. withdrawal from the JCPOA, with negative growth of 5.4 percent in 2018 and 7.6 percent in 2019. The economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has led the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to forecast a further drop of 6 percent in 2020.
Inflation followed a similar pattern of substantial improvement while the nuclear deal was in effect, followed by a dramatic reversal after the onset of maximum pressure. After falling below 10 percent in 2016 and 2017, the inflation rate shot up to 31.2 and 41.4 percent in 2018 and 2019, respectively. The IMF forecasts an inflation rate of 34.7 percent in 2020.
Maximum pressure has also battered Iran’s currency, which was trading at 64,500 rial to the dollar on May 7, 2018 (the day before the U.S. withdrawal from the JCPOA) but has since fallen to 163,000 rial as of May 6, 2020, a 60 percent depreciation. Iran’s liquid reserves are also drying up quickly, which could lead to further depreciation of the rial.
The cause of the greatest damage to the Iranian regime’s finances was Trump’s decision to end all exceptions to sanctions on Iranian oil. China is now the only paying customer for Iranian crude, yet its purchases have fallen 83 percent over the last year. The United States has imposed sanctions on some Chinese importers, while Beijing’s state-owned enterprises have kept their distance.
The loss of oil revenue has had direct fiscal and political consequences for Iran. Facing a massive budget deficit, the regime raised the price of gasoline sharply last November, resulting in nationwide protests. The regime proceeded to massacre peaceful demonstrators, who blamed their own rulers, not the United States, for the country’s deprivation.
The next target for the maximum pressure campaign should be Iran’s revenue from non-oil exports, such as petrochemicals and industrial metals. While sanctions on these goods are already in place, enforcement has not been sufficient to substantially drive down exports. Iran’s roughly $40 billion in annual revenue from non-oil exports is protecting the regime from both budget and balance-of-payments crises.
Three-quarters of Iran’s non-oil exports go to China, Turkey, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, and Afghanistan. The United States has ample leverage over the latter three countries. A sustained crackdown would also confront Turkey and China with risks they can ill afford.
While its own malpractice is responsible for the terrible impact of the novel coronavirus, the regime is exploiting the crisis to advocate for sanctions relief on humanitarian grounds. The regime has more than sufficient reserves to deal with the pandemic, and its claims that sanctions prevent key medical imports are deeply misleading. With the plunge in oil prices, now is the time to accelerate Iran’s cash crunch via full enforcement of U.S. sanctions, especially on the non-oil sectors of Iran’s economy. There should be no relief until the regime makes credible and verifiable commitments to end its nuclear program, foreign aggression, terrorism, and grave human rights violations.
*Saeed Ghasseminejad is a senior Iran and financial economics advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where Richard Goldberg is also a senior advisor. They both contribute to FDD’s Center on Economic and Financial Power (CEFP). For more analysis from Saeed, Richard, and CEFP, please subscribe HERE. Follow Saeed and Richard on Twitter @SGhasseminejad and @rich_goldberg. Follow FDD on Twitter @FDD and @FDD_CEFP. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
The JCPOA May Not See Its Five-Year Anniversary/Andrea Stricker/FDD/May 07/2020اندره ستركير: مركز الدفاع عن الديموقراطية: الإتفاقين النووية مع إيران قد لا ترى الذكرى الخامسة تلوقيعها
Two years after the United States withdrew from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the agreement’s future hangs in the balance as Washington threatens to restore all UN sanctions on the Islamic Republic, thereby terminating the multilateral accord. The Trump administration’s threats represent a response to one of the principal flaws of the agreement, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which is that its key restrictions start to expire, or “sunset,” this year.
The first sunset is scheduled for October, when the UN’s conventional arms embargo on Iran is set to lift. This would enable Tehran to buy advanced weapons from Russia and China despite Iran’s persistent aggression against its neighbors as well as U.S. targets in the region.
Washington could block this first sunset by invoking the JCPOA’s “snapback” mechanism, which grants any permanent UN Security Council (UNSC) member the right to revoke the deal’s implementing measure, UNSC Resolution 2231. Doing so would restore all previous UN measures against Iran, including sanctions and the arms ban. When President Donald Trump withdrew from the JCPOA in May 2018 and re-instituted U.S. unilateral sanctions, he declined to invoke the snapback mechanism.
In December, the State Department released a legal opinion to Congress stating that Washington still has the right to terminate UNSC Resolution 2231 even though it withdrew from the JCPOA. First, however, the administration is trying to prolong the arms embargo without ending Resolution 2231, by getting Russia and China to agree to the embargo’s indefinite extension.
The administration’s push has received strong bipartisan backing from Congress. On May 4, more than three-quarters of the House of Representatives submitted a letter urging Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to undertake diplomatic action to prevent the arms embargo’s expiration.
However, Russia says it will not go along, decrying Washington’s move to determine the JCPOA’s future after leaving the deal. Moscow and Beijing have lined up lucrative military pacts and arms deals with Tehran, and Iranian officials say the regime will leave the JCPOA or even the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty if the UNSC extends the arms embargo.
Meanwhile, the JCPOA’s utility is diminishing, and additional sunsets loom that will unshackle Iran’s nuclear and missile programs. A phased lifting of restrictions on advanced centrifuges and an end to a UN missile import and export ban will occur in 2023 if the agreement remains in force. Iran’s ballistic missile development and launches, unrestricted by the JCPOA, permitted the program to make meaningful strides. A full accounting of Iran’s prior or possibly ongoing nuclear weapons work never occurred, and Tehran is now refusing to cooperate with international nuclear safeguards inquiries into its past. Finally, Iran has gradually and publicly rolled back its compliance with key JCPOA restrictions, enriching more uranium and deploying faster centrifuges. The net effect is a reduction in the time Tehran requires to build a nuclear weapon.
Tough choices lie ahead for the United States, underscoring that unsound strategic premises, like those underlying the JCPOA, typically result in painful policy course corrections. An enduring deal with Tehran must address the full spectrum of threats it poses. Absent a credible commitment by Iran to end its most destabilizing nuclear programs, halt its foreign aggression, and stop its grave human rights violations, the United States should intensify its maximum pressure campaign. Regardless of the victor in November’s presidential election, the United States should not surrender leverage without comparable and verifiable concessions from Iran.
*Andrea Stricker is a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where she also contributes to FDD’s Center on Military and Political Power (CMPP). For more analysis from Andrea and CMPP, please subscribe HERE. Follow Andrea on Twitter @StrickerNonpro. Follow FDD on Twitter @FDD and @FDD_CMPP. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
Major US influence on Iranians sidelined by anti-Trump bias Alireza Nader/FDD/May 07/2020 علي رضا نادر/مركز الدفاع عن الديمقراطية: التحيز ضد ترامب اضعف كثيرا نفوذ أميركا على إيران وحكامها
The Voice of America’s Persian news network was once a powerful tool in Washington’s efforts to shape public opinion in Iran. Now, it is arguably the least-watched of the Persian-language channels available to Iranians seeking an alternative to regime propaganda. The story of VOA Persian’s decline is not one of stagnation but of self-destruction at the hands of a director who is accused of poor management and running the network in opposition to the United States’s maximum pressure campaign.
During her tenure at VOA Persian, Director Setareh Derakhshesh has gutted popular shows, sidelined talented presenters, and reduced resources to the most influential programs that remain. The White House even complained that VOA amplifies the voices of America’s opponents, including that of Iran. VOA surely must report on critics of U.S. policy, but is it the job of VOA routinely to let the Iranian regime’s untruths go unchecked? Urgent and drastic changes in VOA Persian’s management and programming are necessary, especially as Iran witnesses increasing turmoil and profound shifts, making objective and timely reporting more necessary than ever.
VOA Persian used to be one of the most highly rated Persian-language television channels in the world. Iranians, deeply distrustful of the state media monopoly (Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting) would regularly tune in to shows such as VOA Persian’s wildly entertaining and influential Parazit (modeled after Jon Stewart’s Daily Show) or the highly professional Ofogh news program. Those days are long gone, as talented staff have been pushed aside or driven out. According to analysts and experts working on Iran, the network’s viewership has declined precipitously in recent years, overtaken by the immensely popular London-based private channels Manoto TV and the relatively new Iran International.
The situation within VOA Persian is concerning. Derakhshesh’s mismanagement has created a depressed and dysfunctional work environment according to numerous Iranian democracy activists, Iran policy analysts, and even former VOA journalists. Alarmingly, prominent journalists have accused VOA under her leadership of favoring programming in opposition to the U.S. maximum pressure campaign and promoting engagement with the regime even as the regime is virulently and openly hostile to American interests. VOA has also been accused of maintaining a list of pro-democracy activists and analysts who are forbidden from appearing on the network.
A recent major, self-inflicted wound was the firing of Ali Javanmardi, one of the most popular journalists in Iran, officially for challenging regime apologists on social media, although Javanmardi disputes it as the real reason. The sharp and eloquent Javanmardi is a scourge of the country’s religious dictatorship, attracting a large Iranian audience hungry for information and incisive analysis. Formerly based in Erbil, Iraq, Javanmardi has faced threats to his life by a regime with a long history of assassinating and kidnapping journalists and activists.
According to Javanmardi, Derakhshesh fired him due to his support for the Trump administration’s maximum pressure campaign. He describes VOA Persian as an “intensely politicized work environment” where “any support for the U.S. maximum pressure campaign is punished” and only programming promoting the Obama administration’s policies are tolerated.
Javanmardi’s voice is being silenced, not by the Islamic Republic but by the U.S. agency responsible for providing “accurate, balanced, and comprehensive reporting” for “a global audience denied access to open and free media.”
Javanmardi’s departure is likely to lower morale even further and cripple VOA Persian’s ability to attract and retain talented Persian-speaking staff.
U.S. Persian-language broadcasting to Iran is more important than ever, as the Islamic Republic faces an existential crisis due to a collapsing economy and widespread popular demonstrations. Iran is going through historic changes that are not adequately depicted and reported back to Iranians.
But many in both the U.S. and Iran who care deeply about the future of democracy in Iran have lost hope that VOA Persian could be reformed. Better not to have a dysfunctional agency that stifles voices of freedom, they reason. But the network is not beyond repair yet, even as it faces unprecedented competition. What it needs are new leaders with full-throated commitment to VOA’s founding vision of bringing truth to those living under dictatorships.
Alireza Nader (@AlirezaNader) is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (@FDD), a nonprofit, nonpartisan research institute focusing on foreign policy and national security.
Could Iran’s New Spy Satellite Trigger an Israel-Iran War?/Michael Peck/Uncommon Defense/May 07/2020 مايكل بك/هل يؤدي اطلاق إيران القمر الصناعي إلى حرب مع إسرائيل؟ Iran’s Noor spy satellite was launched on April 22.
The undeclared war between Iran and Israel has reached new heights.
Or more specifically, a height of 270 miles, which is the altitude of Iran’s first spy satellite. It’s more than a nice vantage point for Iran to keep an eye on its arch-enemy Israel. Lacking advanced reconnaissance aircraft and drones to penetrate Israeli air defenses, a satellite may be the only way for Tehran to gather real-time intelligence on Israel.
Which raises the question: will Israel be tempted to destroy Iran’s eye in the sky?
While Iran’s space agency has previously placed communications and civilian imaging satellites into orbit, the Noor spy satellite launched on April 22 from the Shahroud missile range in northeast Iran is an explicitly military project run by the hardline IRGC. The satellite’s Low Earth Orbit (LEO) path takes it over North Africa and the central Mediterranean (you can see the current orbital track here), which puts Israel within a space camera’s field of vision.
For a beleaguered Iranian regime caught between U.S. economic sanctions and the ravages of the coronavirus pandemic, Noor was a reminder to domestic and international foes that the regime has muscle. More ominously, the satellite was lofted atop a three-stage Qased (“messenger”) rocket that reportedly combines both solid and liquid fuel propulsion, which suggests that Iran has the potential to develop solid-fueled, nuclear-tipped ICBMs to replace cumbersome liquid-fueled ballistic missiles.
IRGC commander Major General Hossein Salami said that the launch of Noor “is proof that a global power is in the making,” but the satellite was dismissed by U.S. officials as a “tumbling webcam in space.”
Just as the beep-beep-beeping of Sputnik in 1957 announced the Soviet Union was a technological power, Noor is a signal that Iran is a player to be reckoned with. “Today we watch the Earth from the sky, and this is proof that a global power is in the making,” proclaimed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander Major General Hossein Salami.
To be fair, Noor is technologically unimpressive compared to other satellites. As a precursor to a nuclear-armed ballistic missile, the Qased rocket has such limited capacity that it can only deliver a satellite into low orbit rather than a higher vantage point for surveilling the Earth, Israeli newspaper Haaretz noted. More important, it’s too small to carry a nuclear warhead.
Yet Iran’s space shot deserved better than to be dismissed by U.S. officials as a useless “tumbling webcam in space.” Recall that the early American satellite launches of the 1950s exploded on the launch pad, but NASA still managed to land humans on the Moon a decade later.
A satellite passing over Israel every couple of hours could provide useful real-time intelligence.
For Iranian strategists, the celestial snoop is heaven-sent. Iran has a formidable arsenal of ballistic missiles aimed at enemies such as Israel, while its proxy Hezbollah has 150,000 rockets in Lebanon, including GPS-guided weapons and newly developed kits that convert unguided rockets into smart munitions. What Iran and Hezbollah lack is real-time intelligence for targeting those missiles, but a satellite passing over Israel every couple of hours could provide updated imagery of Israeli troop movements, airbases and critical infrastructure.
Yet unfortunately for Tehran, Israel has an even more advanced space program that has already placed spy satellites in orbit, developed interceptors that can shoot down ballistic missiles and even conducted a near-successful attempt to land an unmanned probe on the Moon. So far, only the U.S., Russia, China and India have demonstrated anti-satellite weapons. But if a nation can launch a satellite, it can also figure out how to shoot one down. Indeed, in 2009, Israeli officials raised the possibility that the Arrow 3 – an interceptor that can shoot down ballistic missiles streaking through outer space – could be turned into an anti-satellite weapon.
Should a major clash erupt between Israel and Iran or Israel and Hezbollah – or even if there are ominous signs that a war might be coming – Israel might be tempted to neutralize Iranian satellites. However, destroying a nation’s satellite is an act of war. Indeed, in 2018, the Trump administration indicated that an attack on American satellites could be grounds for nuclear retaliation.
Iran has endured Mossad assassinations on Iranian soil, airstrikes on its forces in Syria and possibly even Israeli F-35 stealth fighters flying over its territory. But destroying a satellite like Noor might be an escalation from which Tehran couldn’t back down.
*Michael Peck is a contributing writer for The National Interest and a writing fellow at the Middle East Forum. He can be found on Twitter, Facebook. or on his personal web site.
Iran using Venezuela to advance its revolutionary interests/Dr. Majid Rafizadeh/May 07/2020 د. ماجد رافيزادا: إيران تستعمل فنزويلا للترويج لمصالح ثورتها
Although the Iranian regime is known for sponsoring and building alliances with Shiite state and non-state actors, Tehran’s alliance strategy is also based on partnering with a variety of forces, whatever their religious differences.
One example is the relationship between Iran and one of its closest allies, Venezuela. The main difference between the Islamic Republic and Venezuela is Tehran’s revolutionary ideal of exporting its theocracy to other nations and uniting the Muslim world under its desired system of governance. In fact, that mission is part of Iran’s constitution, as the preamble to the document states that it “provides the necessary basis for ensuring the continuation of the revolution at home and abroad.”
Early on, the Iranian regime sought to achieve its revolutionary ideals alone, with the Islamic Republic’s founder and first Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini advocating that Tehran should pursue a policy of “neither East nor West.” But the regime soon realized that it could not survive without cooperation with other states.
Tehran began strengthening its ties with Venezuela in the early 2000s, particularly after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became Iran’s president, for several important reasons.
First, Tehran realized that it could more effectively undermine the West on the global stage by partnering with other anti-Western states. As Ahmadinejad pointed out: “We have to develop a proper cooperation among the developing nations in order to wriggle ourselves from the domination of the Western powers. And this effort is going on among the independent developing nations today. We have to establish a collective effort with a view to create a new international independent economic system that should be on the basis of justice.”
Iran’s ultimate goal is counterbalancing the US and scuttling Washington’s foreign policy objectives around the world by exploiting state and non-state actors that have grievances against America. Venezuela shares the same anti-US agenda, with former President Hugo Chavez once saying that Iran and Venezuela would “unite and create a multipolar world. United, we are going to help defeat US imperialism, and that’s why… they get worried in Washington when they see the two of us shaking hands.”
The second reason for Iran’s outreach to Venezuela is to bring itself out of isolation and project that it enjoys legitimacy on the international stage.
The theocratic establishment has also been capable of partially skirting and undermining US or UN sanctions through its strategic alliance with Venezuela. For example, it was revealed last week that the sanctioned airline carrier Mahan Air flew to the South American nation several times in the last week of April alone. The Iranian regime reportedly delivered gasoline additives, parts and technicians, and received 9 tons of gold bars in return.
Iran is desperate for revenue, as the US sanctions, the coronavirus outbreak and plunging oil prices have decimated its economy. According to the Kepler oil tanker tracking and intelligence firm, Iran’s crude oil exports dropped to 250,000 barrels per day in February. Before the US reintroduced sanctions on Iran’s energy sector in 2018, it was exporting about 10 times that amount.
In addition, Tehran has been using Venezuela for military cooperation and to advance its nuclear program. Caracas has been accused of covertly helping Iran with the production of the raw materials required for nuclear weapons, as well as rockets. In recent years, Iran and Venezuela have signed several military and industrial agreements.
Iran has also been successful in increasing its influence in Latin and North America through Venezuela and the US has become increasingly concerned about Hezbollah’s presence in the South American nation. Nathan Sales, coordinator for counterterrorism at the US State Department, stated in January: “We’re concerned that (Venezuelan President Nicolas) Maduro has extended safe harbor to a number of terrorist groups… (including the) supporters and sympathizers of Hezbollah.” It is worth noting that Hezbollah bombed the headquarters of a Jewish community center in Argentina in 1994, killing 85 people.
Tehran realized that it could more effectively undermine the West on the global stage by partnering with other anti-Western states.
The Washington-based Center for a Secure Free Society published a 2014 paper titled “Canada on Guard: Assessing the Immigration Security Threat of Iran, Venezuela and Cuba.” It stated that Venezuela granted more than 173 passports to radical Islamists. These passports could be used for travel to North America or Europe.
Iran’s activities in Venezuela must be monitored closely, as the regime is using the South American country to skirt sanctions and advance its revolutionary and parochial interests.
*Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is an Iranian-American political scientist. He is a leading expert on Iran and US foreign policy, a businessman and president of the International American Council. Twitter: @Dr_Rafizadeh
