15 June 2017

Terror In Tehran

Isis strikes at the heart of Iran.

by Neil Tidmarsh

President Trump’s one success so far has been his visit to the Middle East last month, where he delighted both his Arab and Israeli hosts by denouncing Iran as a sponsor of terrorism and a dangerous destabilising influence in the region.

Saudi Arabia and Iran are enemies; they’re the region’s rival super-powers, opposed to each other along sectarian lines (Saudi Arabia is Sunni and Iran is Shia) and engaged on opposite sides in the civil wars in Yemen and Syria. Israel and Iran are enemies; Iran backs the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah which has sworn to destroy Israel, an ambition which Iran itself shares.  So both Saudi Arabia and Israel were appalled when their ally the USA, under the Obama administration, attempted a rapprochement with Iran and secured a freeze on its nuclear weapons program in return for a lifting of sanctions.

The return of the USA, under the Trump administration, to its traditional Middle Eastern alignments was therefore a huge relief to Arabs and Israelis alike.  The anti-Iran rhetoric and diplomacy escalated immediately after Trump’s visit.  New sanctions against Iran, in retaliation for its support of militant groups, were proposed in the US Senate.  The Saudi deputy crown prince warned Iran against trying to take over the Middle East.  “We will not wait until the battle is in Saudi Arabia but we will work so the battle is there in Iran” he said.  Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt turned on Qatar, the one Gulf state with friendly relations with Iran, and imposed a stranglehold of embargoes and blockades on it.  In Syria, a US airstrike hit a convoy of suspected Iranian-backed Shia militias heading for a Western-backed anti-Isis coalition special forces base; eight troops were killed and four vehicles destroyed.

And then, earlier this week, Iran itself came under attack.  Two coordinated groups of armed militants struck in the centre of Tehran, one fighting their way into the parliament (the country’s political heart) and the other opening fire on guards, police and civilians at the mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomenei (the country’s theocratic heart).  Seventeen people were killed and forty-two were injured.  All the militants were killed – either shot by police and guards or blowing themselves up with suicide bombs.

It seemed, in the immediate aftermath, that this atrocity might escalate the region’s hostilities out of all control.  The Revolutionary Guards were quick to blame Saudi Arabia and promised retaliation, swearing that it would “never allow the blood of innocents to be spilt without revenge.”  The world held its breath, and then breathed out with a big sigh of relief when the Iranian authorities announced that the militants weren’t Saudi Arabian after all; they were in fact Iranians, from the country’s Sunni minority population, and had fought in Syria and Iraq for Isis.  Isis claimed responsibility.

It seems that Isis may well have shot itself in the foot, yet again.  Whether accidentally or deliberately (consciously or unconsciously seeking destruction in accordance with its creed of victimhood, martyrdom, death and suicide), Isis does have a perverse habit of reminding the various participants in the convoluted Syrian conflict that defeating Isis really should be their top priority.  And these reminders are usually very timely, coming just as the participants think that they have other goals or targets to aim at in the region.

When all those countries involved met at Vienna and Geneva in the autumn of 2015 at the beginning of the Syrian peace talks, they agreed that Isis was the common enemy.  Some countries seemed less committed than others, however.  Russia and Turkey, though backing opposing sides in the civil war, both agreed to send planes to bomb Isis in Syria – but in fact Turkey bombed Kurdish forces instead, and Russia bombed anti-Assad rebel forces instead.  One would have expected Isis to stand back, delighted, and leave them to it; but no, Isis promptly launched a deadly suicide bombing campaign within Turkey and brought down a Russian passenger plane in Egypt.  That immediately reminded both Russia and Turkey that Isis was an enemy they had to get to grips with.

In recent weeks, Iranian-backed forces in Syria and Iraq have been concentrating on opening a land corridor from Iran’s own western border across the breadth of both Syria and Iraq to the Lebanon, where their protégé Hezbollah is based, and thus securing Iranian influence and movement across the whole of the region.  Earlier this week they came close to completing that plan by occupying a desert area in Syria on the border with Iraq.  That occupation, however, risks conflict with Western-backed forces fighting Isis in the area, and cuts those forces off from their objective – the Isis-occupied town of Deir Ezzor.  With Isis facing defeat in Mosul and Raqqa, it is vitally important that Deir Ezzor is taken before Isis can regroup and dig-in there.  The fall of Deir Ezzor really would be the end of Isis’ claim to statehood.

So this is just the time when Iran needed to be reminded that the defeat of Isis should take priority over conflict with anti-Assad forces, and the attack on Tehran (although tragic and appalling, as all such attacks are) may well have done just that.

Tension and friction remain between Iran and the allies who oppose it.  Iran continues to supply Qatar in an attempt to frustrate the blockade and the embargos.  The US Senate passed those sanctions against Iran in spite of the attack on Tehran.  Iran has received overtures from Hamas (which is trying to regain Iranian support because it fears losing Qatar’s support). But there are signs of a more co-operative approach behind the scenes. The Iranian authorities announced that their security forces, with international co-operation, have tracked the organiser of that attack to the foreign country whence he’d fled, and killed him. The countries involved in that co-operation weren’t named, but with luck they include one or more of those countries opposed to Iran; so perhaps a similar co-operation will see a united front against an Isis last stand at Deir Ezzor.

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