The drums of war in the Persian Gulf - by Oded Granot -
We need to understand that the shockwaves from a clash between the U.S. and Iran, if it indeed occurs, will reach us. If attacked, Tehran will unleash it proxies, chief among them Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, against Israel.
Tensions between Iran and the United States inched closer to a boiling point as Israelis were celebrating their country's independence on Thursday - as the drums of war are beating ever louder in the Persian Gulf even though both sides clearly don't want one.
The escalation began with a verbal exchange. On the one-year anniversary of the United States' withdrawal from the nuclear deal, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told global powers that his country would cease fulfilling its obligations as part of the deal. At this stage, this mostly means Iran will stop shipping abroad its surplus of enriched uranium and heavy water, as it prepares to enrich uranium at a greater pace.
In response, the White House said it would impose additional sanctions on Iran - not just on its oil production, banks and foreign trade, but on its metals industry. This sector is Iran's top job provider and hurting it could leave many Iranians unemployed, which in turn would increase internal strife.
But the main factor behind increased tensions in the Persian Gulf over the past two days was the Pentagon's decision to deploy the "Abraham Lincoln" aircraft carrier and four B-52H bombers to Qatar. The backdrop, as conveyed by the Pentagon, were fears that Iran was planning to attack American forces stationed in Iraq, perhaps via Shiite militias that it controls.
It's hard to misread these developments. After a year of harsh sanctions, the ayatollah regime in Iran is exceedingly frustrated. This frustration stems from the country's drastic economic downturn, but also from the fact that European countries - who are co-signed to the nuclear deal - have not kept their promises to compensate European companies that continued doing business with Tehran despite the sanctions imposed by Washington.
There's no question the Trump administration is also disappointed. Although the sanctions are having an effect, they still haven't forced Iran to wave the white flag and agree to fundamentally amend the nuclear deal to include shelving its ballistic missile project and ceasing its subversive activities via its proxies across the region.
Moreover, if we can assess the situation according to the behavior of Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza and the latest round of violence with Israel, Iran has only amplified its subversive efforts. This terrorist organization, which is completely subordinate to and entirely funded by Tehran, ignited the latest skirmish by sniping at IDF officers on the border and it is the one presently spearheading, at the behest of Iran, the most aggressive line against Israel.
How will developments in the Persian Gulf unfold in the weeks ahead? It's too soon to make a determination. The Iranians' move to cancel "some" of their obligations stipulated by the nuclear deal is not irreversible and was the least they could permit themselves without being accused of violating it. The main objective behind their move is to incentivize the Europeans to fulfill their promises, and Rouhani even declared a 60-day extension for global powers to reconsider - before Iran accelerates its uranium enrichment.
The Trump administration, for its part, stressed that its military reinforcements are only intended to deter Iran from attacking American forces in the region, adding that the purpose for increasing sanctions is to bring Iran back to the negotiating table.
The problem, of course, is that it's entirely uncertain any of this will actually transpire in the near future. We don't know if the Europeans will surrender to Iranian extortion, and it's almost assured that the White House will not halt sanctions before the Iranians agree to recalibrate their course of action.
This dynamic is a sure-fire recipe for heightened tensions in the Persian Gulf and opens the door for a military escalation. The ayatollah regime, if it feels it must, could renew uranium enrichment and risk a limited military confrontation with the U.S., over the prospect of regime collapse due to domestic revolt amid the country's increasingly dire economic situation.
We need to understand that the shockwaves from such a clash, if it indeed occurs, will reach us. During the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein launched Scud missiles at Israel. Iran, if it is attacked, will unleash it proxies, chief among them Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, against Israel.
Why is pressure mounting between the U.S. and Iran? - Ron Kampeas - https://www.jpost.com/printarticle.aspx?id=589385
The Trump administration sees Iran's behavior as another instance of why it pulled the U.S. out of the deal in the first place: the Iranian regime is not trustworthy.
Iran announced this week that it is changing a key term of the Iran nuclear deal - and plans to make an even more dramatic change in 60 days if partners don't ease conditions.
The partners - Europe chief among them - complained, loudly. But so did an ex-partner: the United States.
The Trump administration immediately retaliated, expanding sanctions on Iran after Tehran said it would fiddle with a deal that the Trump administration thinks should be null and void.
"Hey, this is binary. You're either in compliance or you're not," Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in Baghdad on Tuesday, a day before Iranian President Hassan Rouhani announced the change, and at the same time that the Trump administration was celebrating the one-year anniversary of pulling out of the deal. (Reports of Rouhani's planned announcement had already emerged.)
Pompeo's statements sound a little confusing to observers who have followed the Trump administration's stance on the deal. Trump has called the agreement the "worst" deal ever.
So what's going on?
The answer is that the Trump administration sees Iran's behavior as another instance of why it pulled the U.S. out of the deal in the first place: the Iranian regime is not trustworthy.
"Cheating just a little bit is still cheating. And in the context of Iran's nuclear commitments, it will not be tolerated," Brian Hook, the State Department's special representative for Iran, said Wednesday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "If the clerics in Tehran choose, as the Iranian people are demanding, to play by the rules, respect the sovereignty of their neighbors, and abide by international obligations and commitments, the United States will be ready and willing to engage."
What Iran is planning: Under the 2015 deal, Iran was permitted to enrich uranium for peaceful medical research purposes but was required to sell its surplus. Iran is now immediately keeping its surplus low-enriched uranium, which it had sold overseas. Low enriched uranium may be repurposed to make nuclear weapons. In 60 days, unless its partners take steps to ease its economic isolation, Iran has threatened to remove caps on uranium enrichment levels and resume work on its Arak plutonium nuclear facility.
How the Trump administration reacted: It added new sanctions on Iran's metals sector, on top of sanctions already on Iran's financial and energy sectors.
How partners to the deal reacted: The European Union and three signatories to the deal, Britain, France and Germany, demanded Iran to stick to the deal and urged the United States to butt out.
"We regret the re-imposition of sanctions by the United States following their withdrawal from the JCPOA," a joint statement said, using the acronym for the deal's name, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. "We call on countries not party to the JCPOA to refrain from taking any actions that impede the remaining parties' ability to fully perform their commitments."
Russia and China, the other parties to the deal, are equally as committed to making it work.
What the Trump administration wants: They want the deal to collapse and for Iran to acquiesce to its demands that it end all nuclear activity; that Iran stop producing ballistic missiles; that it stop interfering in the region and elsewhere (the United States sees Iran's malign hand in Yemen, Iraq and Syria, and as far afield as Venezuela); and that it improve human rights for its citizens.
Is the pressure working? The Trump administration thinks so.
"For the first time in a very long time, we are raising the costs of Iran's expansionism and making clear that this kind of blackmail will no longer work," Hook said. "We are making it unsustainable for Iran to support terrorist proxies and militias that for decades have defied the basic standards of behavior observed by normal countries."
He listed, among other consequences, the effective expulsion of Iran from the SWIFT international financial messaging system and the admission by Hezbollah, Iran's ally in Lebanon, that it is starved for cash.
The other partners to the deal are committed to resisting the pressure, and the Europeans are pressing ahead with plans to set up a complex barter system, INSTEX, that would work around the U.S. sanctions.
What happens next? Someone blinks. John Bolton, Trump's national security adviser, last week announced the deployment of extra forces to the region to counter what the United States says is Iran's heightened menace. He cited, but did not define, "troubling and escalatory indications and warnings" from Iran.
Trump, reportedly wary of Bolton's overseas interventionism, might want to replicate his direct overtures to North Korea by talking directly with Iran. (No predecessor ever did: The Obama administration stuck to multilateral talks.)
"What I'd like to see with Iran, I'd like Iran to call me," he said Thursday at a White House briefing with reporters on planned reforms to medical billing.
Pressed into a corner, Iran threatens oil exports from Persian Gulf - By Yaakov Lappin -
Fearful for its economy and domestic stability-and angered by U.S. sanctions and stance-Tehran sends escalation warning signals.
Recent developments in the Persian Gulf demonstrate that Iran has taken a strategic decision to respond to escalating U.S. financial and diplomatic pressure against it by threatening the ability of Arab Sunni states-bitter rivals of Iran and allies of America-to export oil to the world.
The message from the Islamic Republic to the Trump administration is clear: If Iran won't be able to export its oil, neither will its Arab Sunni neighbors-and so the entire global market is at risk of disruption and destabilization.
This is a direct response to the ever-tightening sanctions being placed on Tehran by Washington. Recent U.S. steps include Trump's decision in April to cancel sanction waivers to eight countries that purchase Iranian oil. In recent days, the United States imposed new sanctions on Iranian industrial metals. Last month, the State Department classified its Islamic Republican Guards Corps (IRGC)-a major player in Iran's regional power projection, terrorism network and inside Iran's economy-as a terrorist organization. The latter move is one that some in the American defense establishment assessed could result in retribution.
The decision by Iran to retaliate and extract "a price" for these moves must have been approved by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. It has already been translated into action on the ground, with two attacks on oil sites in recent days.
The first occurred the UAE, in which four commercial ships were damaged in sabotage attacks by an oil-tanker hub near the Straits of Hormuz-a major international oil-shipping artery that Iran has threatened in the past. The second attack took place in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, targeting oil facilities near the Saudi capital of Riyadh with explosive drones.
It is safe to assume that the IRGC is behind both attacks, even if its role in the second incident was limited to passing on instructions to the Iranian-backed Houthi organization in Yemen to launch the drones.
Iran maintains a large network of terrorist, heavily armed proxies throughout the region, giving it the ability of hitting targets while maintaining a facade of plausible deniability.
Its targeting of these sites is no coincidence, as Tehran is particularly enraged by statements from Saudi Arabia pledging to keep the oil-production market steady to make up for the drastic reduction in Iran's oil exports.
On April 24, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani stated that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates "owed their existence to Iran" because the Iranians had refused to help former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invade the two countries. The speech was part of a rebuke of those Gulf states for their willingness to assist the American sanctions. It appears as if the rebuke did not end at the rhetorical level.
Tehran pushes back in a calculated approach
Iran's actions aren't limited to escalating the security situation in the Gulf. It has also imposed an ultimatum on the European Union, giving it 60 days to rescue the 2015 nuclear deal.
Iran is demanding that Europe come through on financial mechanisms that would allow it to bypass American oil and banking sanctions. To make it clear that it is serious, the Islamic Republic declared that it would stop observing limits for stockpiling low-enriched uranium, which the nuclear deal limits to 300 kilograms, and its heavy water (which can be used to produce plutonium). Tehran said the nuclear agreement allows it to take these steps if other members of the deal exit it, as the United States had done in May 2018.
Iran is threatening, in essence, to walk away from the nuclear deal if the Europeans cannot shield it from Trump's sanctions. So far, the E.U.'s leaders have made due with calling on Iran to refrain from any dangerous steps.
Ultimately, Iran is so far telling the United States that it will not succumb to pressure tactics designed to get it back to the negotiating table, which is Trump's openly stated goal. Washington wants to drag Iran back to talks in order to come up with a better nuclear deal, as well as address Iran's destructive, aggressive conduct throughout the Middle East.
This approach was summed up last year by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his 12 demands of Iran, which include ending support for its network of terrorist proxies and an end to its ballistic-missile program.
The Iranians are signaling that they have no intention of going down that route, even if Pompeo's demands represent an "opening position" in Trump's bargaining tactics.
Meanwhile, America is flexing its own military muscle, both through the mobilization of a carrier strike group to the region and through media reports. This includes Monday's New York Times report, describing how Trump's security team are weighing the sending of a massive U.S. force of 120,000 soldiers, backed by air and naval firepower assets, should Iran resume its nuclear program or attack U.S. forces in Iraq, Syria or at sea.
At this stage, Iran appears to be pursuing a calculated and phased approach, which is limited to sending warnings. But it is a dangerous new development in the standoff with Iran, which is prone to miscalculations and rapid escalations, even if they are unintended.
With no one blinking at this stage, Israel will need to be on high alert for Iranian proxy attacks on it. Whether from Syria or Lebanon-where Iran has built an armed force that has more firepower than most militaries in the world-or in Gaza, Iran has the ability to drag Israel into the fray should the situation escalate further.
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