Foreign Policy Magazine
JOHN HANNAH
PART II
At the last minute, the kingdom insisted that there could be no deal unless Iran also participated in the freeze — a non-starter for the Iranians, who had repeatedly made clear that after years of crippling sanctions, they would continue ramping up production until they reached pre-sanctions levels of over 4 million barrels per day. Few had any doubt that a primary purpose of the Saudi decision to keep prices depressed was to undermine Iran’s fledgling economic recovery in the aftermath of the JCPOA.
— At the end of May, Iran announced that none of its citizens would be traveling to Saudi Arabia for the hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Islam’s holiest sites, “because of obstacles created by Saudi officials.” During the 2015 hajj, hundreds of Iranians had died in a stampede that Iran blamed squarely on Saudi mismanagement, greatly exacerbating Saudi-Iranian tensions. According to Gulf sources, in the preparatory talks for this year’s event, the Saudis did in fact go out of their way to make Iranian attendance difficult, if not impossible. For example, I was told that the final ministerial-level delegation that Iran sent to the kingdom to negotiate Iranian participation was not granted standard VIP courtesies at the airport. Its members were instead required to go through normal immigration and customs procedures, forcing them to wait in long lines to have their passports stamped. The Saudis were much stricter than in past years in capping the number of Iranian pilgrims that they would allow to enter the kingdom. Those Iranians that did come were to be banned from displaying any signs, symbols, or flags. Finally, the Saudis were insisting that the Iranians be kept in a closed camp, effectively barred from co-mingling and socializing with participants from other countries, often considered an essential element of the hajj experience. In the end, the mounting indignities and restrictions proved too much for the Iranians and they angrily broke off the talks.
— In June, it was Bahrain — a virtual satellite of Saudi Arabia — that took aggressive action against a highly-regarded Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Isa Qassim, revoking his citizenship and threatening to try him on charges of money laundering and supporting terrorism. That move came shortly after a court ruling that ordered the dissolution of Bahrain’s leading Shiite political movement, al-Wefaq, for whom Qassim served as spiritual leader. Iran reacted vociferously to the crackdown. Qassem Suleimani, the notorious commander of the Qods Force, the IRGC’s elite special operations unit, issued an unprecedented threat against Bahrain’s ruling Sunni family. “The Al Khalifa will pay the price of their actions, and its result will be nothing but the annihilation of this bloodthirsty regime,” he said. He called the action against Ayatollah Qassim “a red line,” the passing of which would “create flames of fire in Bahrain and the entire region.” And in a not-so-veiled warning to the Saudis, Soleimani declared: “The supporters of Al Khalifa should know insulting Ayatollah Sheikh Isa Qassim and the continuation of pressure on the people of Bahrain is the beginning of a bloody uprising.”
— The Saudis, it seems, were not deterred. On the contrary, there is reason to suspect that they could be escalating their anti-Iran campaign even further by targeting not just Iran’s external activities, but its internal stability as well. In early July, Prince Turk al-Faisal — a senior member of the ruling family, the former long-time head of Saudi intelligence, and one-time ambassador to London and Washington — appeared at the annual conference of the controversial Iranian exile group, the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), long viewed by Iran as a terrorist organization.
— In his speech, Turki offered a full-throated endorsement of the MEK, its leadership, and its agenda of toppling the Iranian government. He attacked the “Khomeini cancer” for spreading chaos in the region and responded to the large crowd’s chants by declaring “I, too, want the downfall of the regime.” Provocative, to say the least. While questions persist about the extent to which Turki speaks only for himself, or accurately reflects official Saudi policy, few believe that he would be allowed to trigger such controversies if his actions in fact displeased the Saudi government. In the case of the MEK appearance, that view is certainly bolstered by the fact that Turki’s speech was widely covered by the Saudi media, including live on several prominent Saudi-owned television stations.
—Harder to gauge as it relates to Saudi policy, but nonetheless intriguing, has been a significant uptick in activity this summer by Iranian minority groups. Starting in June, after a long period of inactivity, Kurdish rebels in northwestern Iran initiated several clashes with IRGC forces, with dozens reportedly killed on both sides. Iranian police and politicians have also been targeted by Kurdish assailants. In the southeast, along Iran’s border with Pakistan, jihadi groups linked to Iran’s Baluch minority have launched a series of attacks against the IRGC and Iranian Border Guard Forces. And in southeastern Iran, ethnic Arabs have claimed multiple attacks this summer on critical infrastructure related to Iran’s oil and gas industry, including a petrochemical plant and several pipelines. Interestingly, in addition to seeking the end of Iranian “occupation” of Arab lands, several of the groups claimed to be defending broader Arab interests as well, condemning Iran’s interventions in the affairs of neighboring countries, including Bahrain, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Yemen.
— While there is no hard evidence connecting the kingdom to this flurry of separatist attacks, Iran seems convinced that a Saudi hand lies behind many of them. After a major clash with the Kurds in June, Mohsen Rezaei, the former head of the IRGC and current secretary of Iran’s influential Expediency Council, alleged that Saudi Arabia had dispatched two terror cells to Iranian Kurdistan. He further claimed that the militants were acting upon orders issued by the Saudi consulate in Iraqi Kurdistan, which had opened just a few months earlier, in February 2016. The consulate flatly denied the accusation, as did the Kurdish group that carried out the attacks.
— A month later, following additional clashes, Rezaei repeated his claims about the role being played by the Saudi consulate, warning for good measure that “The Saudis are the most evil government in the world and are driving into instability with their own insanity.” Also in July, the IRGC’s current commander, General Mohammad Ali Jafari, declared: “The enemies of the Islamic Revolution … are doing their best to spread insecurity in Iran. Some regional countries and Saudi Arabia have been added to the [list of] apparent enemies.” Concurrently, Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, spoke about the attacks by Baluch militants, and in a clear allusion to the Saudis, charged that “one Islamic country uses its own money to spread war and terrorism in the region on behalf of the Islamic world’s enemies.”
— Heightening Iran’s paranoia in this regard, no doubt, has been a steady drum beat of reports for the past year that the Saudis are systematically seeking to improve relations with Israel as part of their efforts to counter Iran. Turki al-Faisal has appeared on a number of panels in the United States and Europe with former high-level officials in Israel’s national security establishment. More recently, in July, a retired Saudi general, Anwar Eshki, broke taboos when he led a delegation of businessmen and academics on an unprecedented trip to Israel. The delegation met openly with senior Israeli officials and conducted interviews with Israeli media outlets. It’s an open secret that these accelerating public interactions between Saudis and Israelis have been supplemented by an expanding covert relationship, including meetings between high level government officials, security experts, and intelligence agencies. The burgeoning Israeli-Saudi ties are clearly unnerving the Iranians. After the Eshki trip to Israel, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a harsh rebuke, tweeting: “Revelation of Saudi government’s relations with Zionist regime was stab in the back of [the] Islamic [community].” Days earlier, Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, launched an extended attack on the kingdom, focusing in particular on Prince Turki’s activities and the Eshki visit. Nasrallah insisted that “None of this could have happened without the Saudi government’s approval.” He lamented that Israel is no longer viewed as an enemy by the Arab states, and claimed that “the worst and most important development in this matter is Saudi Arabia taking its relationship with Israel from a clandestine connection to a public one.” Nasrallah warned, “Saudi Arabia is set to recognize Israel,” and was ready to normalize relations “for free, without receiving anything in return” on the Palestinian issue.
A particular Iranian worry when it comes to deepening Saudi-Israeli coordination could well concern Iran’s internal stability. The Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service, has long viewed Iran’s large, disparate, and disgruntled minority communities as potentially a major vulnerability for the regime. This view was articulated most forcefully by Meir Dagan, the late Mossad chief, who regularly made the case to U.S. officials that promoting the downfall of Iran should be an essential element of any strategy, short of war, to end the Iranian nuclear threat. Dagan was convinced that more could be done to appeal to the Iranian people, in particular by working with dissatisfied minority populations who comprise an estimated 40 to 50 percent of Iran’s population. He also believed that the Arab Gulf states might participate in such a strategy, especially if the United States played a coordinating role.
Whether or not Dagan’s vision has yet come to pass, there’s now little doubt about its growing plausibility in a post-JCPOA world. As detailed above, the nuclear deal, with all its implications, is leading the Saudis to adopt a much more aggressive posture in confronting what they see as a growing Iranian threat. The kingdom’s historically defensive, risk-averse, even sclerotic national security doctrine has, under King Salman and especially his son, Mohammed bin Salman, increasingly given way to a bolder and more confrontational approach. Indeed, some have even called it reckless. To be fair, the Obama administration can rightly claim a degree of credit for encouraging the Saudis to step up to this larger role. Obama has made clear that part of his “mission” as president has been to spur traditional U.S. allies, like the Saudis, to take action for themselves, rather than always waiting for the United States to lead and then “holding our coat.” The president has called this his “anti-free rider campaign.”
The problem, of course, is that the administration’s effort to promote greater burden sharing has not been pursued by way of revitalizing alliances with a new sense of common purpose and cooperation, but by leaving traditional partners feeling abandoned and betrayed. Obama seems to have been under the illusion that the abrupt retrenchment of U.S. power and leadership from the Middle East would result in the organic rise of a new regional equilibrium as local actors were forced to play larger roles in ensuring peace and stability.
