Tag: Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif

Three to Tango: With the US Looming Large, India-Iran Ties Over the Years

Despite years of a personalised relationship with India, Iran seems to have decided to take the bull by the horns perhaps after a cost-benefit analysis.

Post-US intervention in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, India-Iran relations always had – as Princess Diana once famously said about her marriage, “Three of us in it”; the third being the US.

Prior to that, strategic convergence between India and Iran grew from the mid-1990s, driven by common objectives in Afghanistan and the shared threat from Taliban and its sponsor Pakistan. This was exacerbated after the capture of Kabul by Taliban in 1996 when only the Northern Alliance stood in its way of overrunning all of Afghanistan.

In 2001, then prime minister A.B. Vajpayee visited Teheran and was hosted by reformist and then ascendant Iranian president Mohammad Khatami. The resulting Teheran Declaration reflected the growing engagement.

The Iranian president returned the visit in 2003 and was the chief guest at Republic Day. But by then, the Taliban had been deposed by the US and had found sanctuaries in Pakistan. US troops already controlled Afghanistan and would attack Iraq two months later.

From mid-2003, when the clandestine enrichment programme of Iran was revealed – including links to rogue Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan – India-Iran relations began to sputter. Iran was being pilloried for its nuclear programme, for what it thought were activities allowed to it as signatory of the Non-Proliferation treaty (NPT). India, on the other hand, as a non-signatory was, according to Iraq, unfairly negotiating a nuclear deal with the US.

Also read: Iran Foreign Minister Calls on India to ‘Not Let Senseless Thuggery Prevail’

The US had begun to interpose in India-Iran relations, and this still persists. From 2003 onwards, India-Iran bilateral relations began to feel the impact. The US pressured India to vote with them and against Iran at International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), curtail trade and oil purchases from Iran and comply with US sanctions.

India maintained it would only comply with UN sanctions and not additional ones mandated by US laws. Iran turned its attention westwards and with patience and shrewdness through proxies it ensnared US militarily in a sectarianism and terrorism fed civil war in Iraq. From this militant brew arose the first al-Qaeda clone under Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and then the ISIS hybrid under Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

While president George W. Bush managed to push back and stabilise Iraq enough to get notional democratic processes going, his successor President Barack Obama first dithered and then chose to completely alter US approach to the region.

He calculated that the suddenly emergent ISIS, which created an Islamic Caliphate literally overnight across large swathes of territory in northern Iraq and Syria, could either be controlled by a third US war – for which US was unprepared – or the co-option of Iran.

He chose the latter and that led to the signing of the nuclear deal with Iran by P-5 and Germany.

With this entente with the Western nations, Iran began to slowly assert influence and then control via proxies all across West Asia, running through Iraq, Syria and Lebanon to the Mediterranean. While India-Iran relations regained some normalcy, the old warmth was missing as both nations had different strategic priorities. While Iran’s Quds Force, led by late major general Qasem Soleimani, shored up the beleaguered Syrian government of Bashar al Assad, with the Russians jumping in to provide air cover, the Hezbollah and Kurds pitched in with ground forces.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani shakes hands with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a photo opportunity ahead of their meeting at Hyderabad House in New Delhi, February 17, 2018. Photo: Reuters/Adnan Abidi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, after assuming power in 2014, began a personal outreach to Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates. Even though these two nations were in open conflict with Iran in Yemen and via their surrogates in Syria India-Iran relations were insulated from it. This changed with the arrival of President Donald Trump in 2016. He reversed the Obama outreach to Iran, aligned openly with Saudi-Emirati alliance, withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal and literally armed the sanctions against Iran.

Also read: Policy Paralysis Cannot Be India’s Response to the US–Iran Impasse

Trump personalised his diplomacy to an extent that he broke past conventions by openly interfering in the elections of leaders he found likeable. He shifted the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and declared the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps as a terrorist organisation on the eve of Israeli elections to give a boost to beleaguered prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

He repeatedly urged the British to go for Brexit and even support Boris Johnson against the incumbent Conservative prime minister of his own party. In India, he played a critical role, as his own tweet claimed, in getting a quick resolution to the Pulwama-Balakot near-war Indo-Pakistan confrontation, which an election-bound PM Modi fully used to his benefit.

Inherent in this was the likelihood that countries opposed to the US-Saudi-Emirati alliance in the region would start viewing India as partisan. This danger was enhanced by Modi government, after being swept into power again in 2019, by front-loading their ideological and sectarian agenda. Starting with amendments to Article 370 to Triple Talaq Bill and eventually the Citizenship Amendment Act, there was breathless pursuit of a to-do list of things, like all parties, in their election manifesto which are normally implementable after consensus building.

Even the BJP has been taken by surprise by the lack of electoral benefit from this agenda in a series of state elections, which they either lost or barely scraped through. Even more so, they fail to understand the damage it is doing to Indian image abroad and relations particularly with the Islamic nations.

Verbal spats with Turkey, Malaysia and even Indonesia were followed by Iran very strongly reminding India of its constitutional duties. Despite India remonstrating with the Iranian ambassador, Iran upped the ante with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who only intervenes in public when Iran is prepared for confrontation, urging India to “confront extremist Hindus & their parties & stop the massacre of Muslims in order to prevent India’s isolation from the world of Islam”.

Also read: India Summons Iranian Envoy Over Comments by Foreign Minister on Delhi Violence

Iran seems to have decided to take the bull by the horns perhaps after cost-benefit analysis. India having largely succumbed to US sanctions, something India resisted since 2003 as India only recognised UN sanctions, there is little relief Iran perceives coming from India through trade and investment.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s highly personalised dalliance with the Saudi and Abu Dhabi crown princes and now with Trump at Motera stadium has been read as India siding with Iranian antagonists with visible enthusiasm. Iran calculates that India needs them more than the other way around as after the Taliban-US deal only they control the access to Afghanistan, other than Pakistan.

India will think twice before putting that in danger, unlike barring palm oil imports from Malaysia. Thus, traditional Indian ability to play all sides in a region riven by fault-lines and animosities now stands degraded.

Will the BJP live in denial or adapt its domestic agenda? Only time will tell.

K.C. Singh is a retired Indian civil servant and was the Indian ambassador to Iran.

India Summons Iranian Envoy Over Comments by Foreign Minister on Delhi Violence

In a tweet on Monday, Zarif said, “Iran condemns the wave of organised violence against Indian Muslims.”

New Delhi: India on Tuesday summoned Iranian Ambassador Ali Chegeni and lodged a strong protest with him over the comments made by Iran’s foreign minister Javad Zarif over violence in Delhi.

Official sources said that the Iranian envoy was conveyed that Zarif commented on a matter which is purely internal to India.

In a tweet on Monday, Zarif said, “Iran condemns the wave of organised violence against Indian Muslims.”

“The Iranian Ambassador in Delhi was summoned on Tuesday and a strong protest was lodged over the comments made by Zarif on the matter internal to India,” a source said.

In response to a media query regarding remarks made by the Iranian foreign minister in a tweet, MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said:

“The Iranian Ambassador to India Mr Ali Chegeni was summoned and a strong protest was lodged against the unwarranted remarks made by the Iranian Foreign Minister. It was conveyed that his selective and tendentious characterisation of recent events in Delhi are not acceptable. We do not expect such comments from a country like Iran.”

(With PTI inputs)

US Imposes Sanctions on Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif

Mohammad Javad Zarif has responded defiantly to the US targeting him for his role as Iran’s chief diplomat.

The US on Wednesday put sanctions on Iran’s foreign minister, in a highly unusual move that effectively closes diplomatic avenues amid already heightened tensions between the two countries.

The US Treasury said it was imposing sanctions on Mohammad Javad Zarif because he acted on behalf of the Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

“Javad Zarif implements the reckless agenda of Iran’s Supreme Leader, and is the regime’s primary spokesperson around the world. The US is sending a clear message to the Iranian regime that its recent behaviour is completely unacceptable,” treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement.

Popular inside Iran

The smooth-talking, US educated diplomat has been Iran’s chief interlocutor on the international stage and the main point person on the country’s civilian nuclear industry, which the United States says is a covert weapons programme. He is widely considered one of the most popular figures inside Iran.

The US Treasury said in a statement Zarif spreads “the regime’s propaganda and disinformation” through social media and his ministry has coordinated with one of Iran’s “most nefarious state entities,” the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) elite Quds force.

The US sanctions block any of Zarif’s assets in the US and prohibit US institutions from doing business with him. They also potentially subject any foreign institution that conducts a significant transaction with him to US sanctions.

It is unclear how the sanction will impact Zarif’s ability to visit the UNs headquarters in New York as Washington is bound by an international agreement, although he could see his movement restricted.

“The US’s reason for designating me is that I am Iran’s ‘primary spokesperson around the world.’ Is the truth really that painful? It has no effect on me or my family, as I have no property or interests outside of Iran. Thank you for considering me such a huge threat to your agenda,” Zarif said via Twitter in response to the sanctions.

Series of sanctions

The sanctions against Zarif ratchet up Washington’s so-called “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran, which has dubbed President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the 2015 international nuclear accord and subsequent reimposition of crushing sanctions “economic terrorism.”

In June, the Trump administration imposed additional sanctions on the supreme leader and in April labelled the IRGC a terrorist organisation, despite opposition from the Pentagon over worries the move would endanger US troops in the Middle East.

The Trump administration has said it withdrew from the 2015 international nuclear accord in order to get a “better deal” that addresses Iran’s wider policy in the Middle East and ballistic missile program. It has also said it is willing to talk with Iran.

Instead, the US policy has only driven a wedge between Washington and Europe and hardened Iran’s resolve to resist, raising the risk of a war across an already volatile region.

Also read: From the Arrest of Tankers to Spies, US-Iran Tensions Rise: The Story So Far

Analysts said that by sanctioning Zarif, the Trump administration essentially signalled a willingness to shut the door on diplomacy at a time of heightened tensions in the Persian Gulf following several tanker and drone incidents.

“This puts the Trump administration’s Iran policy incoherence on full display. The administration can no longer pretend that it’s primarily interested in diplomacy, when it sanctions Iran’s diplomat in chief,” Ali Vaez, the director of the Iran Project at the International Crisis Group, told DW.

The sanctions are also “bound to backfire as it bolsters Zarif’s domestic standing by neutralising his critics,” he added, referring to hardliners in Iran opposed to reaching any accommodation with the United States.

This article was originally published on Deutsche Welle.

Iran’s President Rejects Resignation of Moderate Ally Javad Zarif

Zarif’s departure would have deprived Iran of its most skilled diplomat who was able to strike a deal with Western powers during years of intense negotiations.

Dubai/London: Iranian President Hassan Rouhani rejected the resignation of foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Wednesday, standing by a moderate ally long targeted by hardliners in factional struggles over a 2015 nuclear deal with the West.

Zarif – a US-educated veteran diplomat who helped craft the pact that curbed Iran’s nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief – announced his resignation on Instagram on Monday.

“As the Supreme Leader has described you as a ‘trustworthy, brave and religious’ person in the forefront of resistance against widespread US pressures, I consider accepting your resignation against national interests and reject it,” Rouhani said in a letter published on state news agency IRNA.

Zarif’s departure would have deprived Iran of its most skilled diplomat, a patient negotiator who was able to strike a deal with Western powers during years of intense negotiations.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Credit: Reuters/Danish Siddiqui/File Photo

His knowledge of the West gained during years of studying in the US and then representing Iran at the United Nations enabled him to build a rapport with American officials despite decades of animosity between Washington and Tehran.

After US President Donald Trump abandoned the nuclear deal, Zarif’s conservative opponents accused him of selling out his country.

The widespread publicity around Zarif’s resignation announcement, and then strong support from senior officials which followed may give him political ammunition against hardliners as an internal power struggle continues.

Zarif gave no specific reasons for his resignation.

Also read: After Javad Zarif’s Exit, Where Does Iran Stand?

Schism

But his move thrust the schism between Iran’s hardliners and moderates into the open, effectively challenging Khamenei to pick a side.

The schism between hardliners and moderates over the nuclear deal shows the tension in Iran between the two factions, and between the elected government which runs the country on a day-to-day basis and a clerical establishment with ultimate power.

In another show of confidence, senior Revolutionary Guards commander Qassem Soleimani said Zarif – was the main person in charge of Iranian foreign policy and he was supported by the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

On Wednesday, Zarif thanked Iranians for their support. “As a modest servant I have never had any concern but elevating the foreign policy and the status of the foreign ministry,” he added in an Instagram post.

After Rouhani’s announcement, Zarif signed two agreements in Tehran with Armenia, television footage showed, continuing his duties as Iran’s top diplomat.

An ally of Zarif told Reuters his resignation was motivated by criticism of the nuclear accord, under increasingly intense fire in Iran since the US abandoned it last year.

Zarif has had to explain why Iran has continued to abide by its restrictions while reaping virtually none of the foreseen economic benefits.

Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh, another moderate, on Wednesday denied reports by a hardline lawmaker that he had also resigned, the Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA) reported.

(Reuters)