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U.S. -Led Pressure on Iran Regime May Impede “Power Shift to the East”

U.S. -Led Pressure on Iran Regime

By Amir Taghati

On Tuesday, Sigal Mandelker, the US Treasury Department’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, spoke to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington think tank, on the topic of Iran’s persistent financing of malign activities both at home and abroad. The Tower highlighted excerpts from that speech to emphasize that the Trump White House is presently working both to increase pressure on the Iranian regime over these issues and to discourage the nations of Europe and other parts of the world from providing Tehran with access to financial capital that could contribute to its support of terrorism, its destabilization of the Middle East region, and its domestic human rights abuses.

Mandelker declared that the Iranian regime has consistently demonstrated its commitment to these things, even while the 2015 Iran nuclear deal was in full effect. Her speech came nearly a month after President Donald Trump withdrew the US from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and about two weeks after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo outlined a new strategy for dealing with Iran that would include “the strongest sanctions in history” if Iran failed to curtail its objectionable activities.

Mandelker reiterated this threat on Tuesday, saying, “The impact of our sanctions will only grow more painful if the regime does not change course.” While such threats primarily target the Islamic Republic itself, the Trump administration has not shied away from warning of secondary sanctions that would affect any European businesses that decide to continue doing business with Iran while also maintaining contact with the US financial system. “We will hold those doing prohibited business in Iran to account,” the Treasury official declared.

This warning was accompanied by apparent appeals to the shared conscience of all democratic nations. Mandelker accused Tehran of exploiting “the global financial system, as well as country after country around the world” in order to finance its various illicit activities. Accordingly, she cautioned those countries about the possibility of their national wealth being made an unwitting tool of Iranian terrorism and transgressions against the peoples of the Middle East.

Recent developments in that region suggest that the administration’s appeals may be of some interest not just to Iranian regime’s traditional adversaries but also to one or more of the countries with which it has enjoyed increasingly close relations in recent months. This is because, as Newsweek reported on Wednesday, there are growing signs of Russian discomfort with Iranian regime’s plans in Syria, where both Iran and Russia have been providing influential support to the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad.

It has long been suggested that the two countries’ interests with regard to the Syrian Civil War might be on a path toward divergence. This is partly because Russia has faced the task of balancing its alliances with the Iranian regime and with Israel, which has repeatedly sworn to bar Iran from developing a permanent foothold in Syria. Israeli and Iranian forces have directly clashed over this issue in recent months, as when Israel responded to a drone incursion into its airspace by destroying Iranian military assets in Syria.

Russia recently positioned its own forces in the border area between Syria and Lebanon, as well as sending a delegation of officials to Lebanon in order to discuss a plan for moving Iran-backed militias farther away from Israel. Moscow has accordingly insisted that all foreign forces should leave Syria ahead of a political solution to the civil war. But this position has faced pushback from Tehran and from Iranian proxies like the Lebanese paramilitary Hezbollah.

Newsweek reported that the Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, a political ally of Hezbollah, has told Russian media that the Iranians and their Shiite paramilitary allies will remain in Syria for the long haul, and specifically until the Assad regime destroys all remaining pockets of resistance and thereby regains full control over the whole of Syrian territory.

It appears likely that the Russian government will demonstrate discomfort with such commitments, though it remains to be seen exactly how Moscow might react. It is, of course, unlikely that the Russians would cast Tehran aside altogether, as by endorsing the sort of economic isolation currently being championed by the Trump administration. But if Moscow scales back its alliance with Tehran in any measure, it may amplify the effectiveness of American pressure, especially if European governments and companies continue their pattern of compliance with emerging US sanctions.

One possible effect of cooling relations between the Iranian regime and the Russian Federation is a reduction in Iran’s chances of gaining full membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The SCO is scheduled to meet on Friday and Saturday, and various outlets have lately predicted that Iran’s prospects are good for having its status upgraded from observer, to join the eight full members, which include Russia and China.

This is significant – and any impediment to the upgrade is equally significant – because as pundits describe it, Iran’s acceptance would represent a “power shift to the east.” In recent years, global security analysts have speculated about the emergence of an eastern bloc of nations centered around Russia, China, and Iran, which could represent an organized challenge to American hegemony and Western interests in general. Experts suggest that China has specifically theorized the bloc in these terms, as evidenced by President Xi Jinping inviting his Iranian counterpart to a bilateral meeting as a “symbolic gesture meant to antagonize the White House.”

But even in the wake of that antagonism, the existing SCO members will likely have to act with unity of purpose if they are to “turn the tide of US-Iran relations.” And this unity may yet be undermined if the White House succeeds in convincing Russia, as well as other nations with an interest in Syria’s future, that helping to enrich the Iranian regime will have the effect of also preventing the stabilization of the surrounding region.