▪ For four decades, the mullahs have successfully practiced their “do-and-deny” tactic thanks to the indulgence, not to say cowardice, of Western leaders and the pathetic anti-Americanism of some Western pseudo-intellectuals.

▪ Western anti-American intellectuals who become apologists for the mullahs are victims of their inability to conceive of a situation in which, while America may be bad, its adversary may be worse.

▪ Then we had America versus the Third Reich. Later, America vs. the Soviet Empire, vs. the Vietcong and Khmer Rouge, vs. the Afghan Taliban, vs. Saddam Hussein. In every case, even if America was not the shining city on the hill, its adversary at the time was much worse.

▪ Apologists for the Islamic Republic do not do it a service. By endorsing its illusions and shielding it against deserved criticism, they encourage its worst tendencies — tendencies that could cost Iran and the region more than they imagine.

For four decades, Iran’s mullahs have successfully practiced their “do-and-deny” tactic thanks to the indulgence, not to say cowardice, of Western leaders and the pathetic anti-Americanism of some Western pseudo-intellectuals. Pictured: Iran’s “Supreme Leader” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (left) and President Hassan Rouhani. (Image source: khamenei.ir)

How to take credit for a mischief you have committed but do not wish to own up to?

This is the dilemma Tehran apologists face when discussing the latest shenanigans in the region, including missile and drone attacks on Saudi oil installations.

On the one hand they want to take credit for the attacks and cast the Khomeinist regime as a mighty power capable of giving as good as it takes in a duel against the American “Great Satan.” They try to cast Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei as the little Tom Thumb taking on Donald Trump as the giant of the folk tale.

On the other hand, they try to cast Iran as an innocent victim, highlight the sufferings of babies supposedly left without powdered milk and old women running out of medication.

Wrapping up that theme is the claim that the Islamic Republic has done absolutely nothing that merits sanctions, and that the latest attacks were the work of Yemeni Houthis, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Iraq’s PMF or even the army of djinns commanded by Zaafar al-Jinni from the 1001 Nights.

This double narrative is not limited to Tehran’s propagandists; it is also adopted by some Western commentators who, for reasons of their own, think that in any conflict between the United State and an adversary, the United States should automatically get the blame.

In the past couple of weeks, Iran’s state-controlled media have made ample use of op-eds and TV shows in which the “Blame America First” crowd celebrate the recent attacks on tankers and oil installations as Tehran’s legitimate response to American “pressures.”

The daily Kayhan, expressing the views of “Supreme Guide” Khamenei, devotes front page space to comments by Fareed Zakaria, a “Muslim American” TV anchor who claims that the Islamic Republic by “disrupting navigation, downing an American drone, the activation of surrogate forces and recent attacks on Saudi oil installations” has rendered Trump’s policy ineffective.

Kayhan also reports comments by Richard Haas, a former U.S. State Department official, who insists that Trump’s policy has failed and that Iran has shown its capacity to hit back where it hurts.

Raja News, run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), runs an interview with Reuel Marc Gerecht from Foreign Policy magazine, in which Gerecht calls Khamenei “the most successful Middle Eastern leader since World War II.”

Gerecht claims that with recent attacks on tankers and oil installations, Tehran “raises the middle finger at the United States. And two, it hits the Saudis, whom they [Iranians] loathe.”

Another IRGC site, Fars News, runs a similar analysis, this time from the Crisis Group, a Brussels-based research outfit funded by the American financier George Soros.

The official agency IRNA cites a CNN interview with Mohammad Javad Zarif, in which the Iranian Foreign Minister says “the olive branch” is on the table but warns that more tension is possible, implying that the latest attacks were at least inspired by Tehran.

Tehran’s Iranian-born apologists in the West also play the “we-did-it-but-we-didn’t-do-it” game. Persian-language radio and TV programs run by US, British and French governments host real or imagined experts who claim that while the attacks came in retaliation to Trump’s “maximum pressure,” the Islamic Republic knew nothing of them.

A former Khomeinist minister, based in London, attacks those who had depicted the structural weaknesses of Iran’s defenses by boasting about “the exactitude and effectiveness of the recent attacks on Saudi oil installations.”

A BBC Persian TV commentator says that in a recent airport encounter with Iranian travelers returning home, he joined them in cheering the recent attacks but then told them with a wink that “we shouldn’t let the world know that we did it!”

The history of taking credit for terrorist operations while denying involvement in them is as old as the Iranian Revolution itself.

In 1978, Khomeinist operators set an Abadan Cinema on fire and caused the death of over 400 people. The Supreme Leader, then in France, instantly blamed the Shah’s secret service SAVAK. It was not until 2003 that the Islamic Republic admitted that the fire had been the work of Khomeinist revolutionaries who had not realized that the emergency exits were all blocked.

In November 1979, when “students” raided the US Embassy in Tehran and seized its diplomats as hostages, Khomeini claimed that he knew nothing of it, but sent a special emissary supposedly to run the show.

Once he had realized that the Americans would do nothing, he claimed the embassy raid as “Manifest Victory” (“Fatah al-Mobin” in Arabic) and a sign that his brand of religion was to conquer the world.

That was the start of hostage-taking as a feature of Khomeinist diplomacy. For two decades, Tehran organized the capture of over 100 hostages from 22 countries, mostly Western. All the time, however, Tehran denied any involvement in hostage-taking operations but negotiated the release of the captives in exchange for money and arms.

More than two dozen attacks on foreign embassies in Tehran and the brief capture and beating up of numerous foreign diplomats in the past four decades have been blamed on “rogue elements” who were later honored and promoted within the regime. Of the 60 “students” who initiated the first hostage-taking operation, 40 rose to high positions including Vice President, cabinet minister, governor, IRGC general and ambassador.

Iranian agents killed 117 dissidents in 13 European countries, plus Turkey and Dubai, always taking credit and denying involvement.

For four decades, the mullahs have successfully practiced their “do-and-deny” tactic thanks to the indulgence, not to say cowardice, of Western leaders and the pathetic anti-Americanism of some Western pseudo-intellectuals.

Those Western leaders fell victim to the illusion expressed by President George H. W. Bush in his ridiculous phrase “goodwill begets goodwill”!

Western anti-American intellectuals who become apologists for the mullahs are victims of their inability to conceive of a situation in which, while America may be bad, its adversary may be worse.

Stalin signed his pact with Hitler because the Soviet Communist Party regarded “Imperialist” America as “arch enemy.” Some Western intellectuals hailed the pact for the same reason.

Then we had America versus the Third Reich. Later, America vs. the Soviet Empire, vs. the Vietcong and Khmer Rouge, vs. the Afghan Taliban, vs. Saddam Hussein. In every case, even if America was not the shining city on the hill, its adversary at the time was much worse.

Apologists for the Islamic Republic do not do it a service. By endorsing its illusions and shielding it against deserved criticism, they encourage its worst tendencies — tendencies that could cost Iran and the region more than they imagine.

The post Tehran’s ‘We Did, We Didn’t’ Game by Amir Taheri appeared first on APADANA MEDIA.

▪ Both President George W Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair told me at different times that they had identified “men with whom we can work” in Tehran and that the key to success was getting rid of Khamenei and his “hardliners.”

▪ [W]hether we like it or not, it is Khamenei, and not Rafsanjani, Khatami or Rouhani, who set the tune in the Islamic Republic.

▪ Thus if Trump, or anyone else, wish to make a deal with the present regime in Tehran, the man they should talk to is Khamenei, not Rouhani, an actor playing the president.

▪ [T]he two are, in fact, just one creature in two disguises, a witch bent on doing mischief.

▪ Trump has been warned!

If President Donald Trump, or anyone else, wish to make a deal with the present regime in Tehran, the man they should talk to is Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (left), not Hassan Rouhani (right), an actor playing the president.

For a few hours last weekend, political circles in Tehran were seized with speculative fever regarding a possible meeting between US President Donald Trump and the Islamic Republic’s President Hassan Rouhani. Trump had announced in Biarritz, where the G7’s farcical summit was held, that he would be prepared to meet the Iranian mullah and believed that could happen soon. For his part, Rouhani went on TV to declare readiness to meet “anyone”, with no ifs and buts.

One “reformist” analyst phoned me in the middle of night Paris time to “inform” me that, with help from Trump, his faction was about to win a decisive victory over the “hardline” faction led by Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei.

In his narrative, Rouhani would meet Trump in September when both are to attend the United Nations’ General Assembly in New York. They would establish a “roadmap” leading to an agreement incorporating the Obama “nuke deal” plus additional demands by Trump. That, in turn, would lead to a lifting of US sanctions, saving the Iranian economy from a meltdown.

The “miracle” would coincide with the next general election in Iran and a secure landslide victory for “reformists”. That, in turn, would enable them to press for Khamenei’s retirement and replacement by Rouhani, while Muhammad-Javad Zarif, the “heroic” foreign minister, throws his hat, since he has no turban, into the ring for the presidency. With Khamenei and his “Russophile” faction eliminated, the “New York Boys” would put Iran on a new trajectory as the United States’ key partner in the Middle East.

What was remarkable in that narrative was how stale it was.

Weeks after the mullahs seized power, the Carter administration in Washington identified Mehdi Bazargan, Khomeini’s first prime minister, as “the man with whom we can work.”

After he was kicked out, attention was turned to more ephemeral figures such as Ayatollah Muhammad Beheshti, Abol-Hasaan Banisadr and Sadeq Ghotbzadeh who were supposed to lead Iran out of its revolutionary phase into normality, whatever that meant.

With Ayatollah Khomeini, supposedly too old to last long, these were the men who would shape Iran’s Thermidor, emerging from the reign of terror. Fariba Adelkhah, then a young researcher in Paris and later an ardent apologist for the Islamic Republic, even wrote a book bearing the title “Iranian Thermidor”. (She is now a hostage in Tehran held by the very men she had so passionately defended in the French media.)

Over the years, we heard similar analyses from the Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani faction in the 1980s, the Muhammad Khatami circle in the1990, and the Larijani brothers in 2004. Both President George W Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair told me at different times that they had identified “men with whom we can work” in Tehran and that the key to success was getting rid of Khamenei and his “hardliners.”

At one point, the Reagan administration saw Rafsanjani, a wily mullah-cum-businessman, as the Iranian version of Deng Xiaoping. Tony Blair, no doubt under Jack Straw’s influence, saw Khatami, a middling mullah and a wannabe intellectual, as the “Iranian Gorbachev”.

As early as 2004, both the British and the French saw Rouhani as the man capable of delivering what Rafsanjani and Khatami had promised but failed to deliver. The horse on which John Kerry put his bet was Muhammad-Javad Zarif, whose team of “New York Boys” provided Rouhani with a “liberal” varnish.

Western analysts and their imitators inside Iran missed two crucial points.

The first was that, like most revolutionary regimes, the Khomeinist outfit had no mechanism for reform in the direction desired by the Iranian middle classes and the Western powers. Thus, even if its leaders tried to introduce reforms they would be doomed to failure. Lenin tried that in the 1920s with his New Economic Policy (NEP) that, instead of liberalizing the Soviet system, produced Josef Stalin. Mao Zedong’s reform project, known as “The 100 Flowers,” morphed into the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, millions of deaths and further hardening of the Communist regime. Khomeini himself attempted a similar move with his 8-Points reform project in 1981, leading to mass executions in 1988. In the Islamic Republic, the number of executions and political prisoners has always risen under “reformist” presidents such as Khatami and Rouhani.

The second point Western powers ignore is that Iranians today are divided into two broad camps, obviously with subdivisions within each camp. One camp consists of those, perhaps even a majority today, who are disillusioned with the Islamic Revolution and seek ways of closing its chapter as soon as possible. The idea of “change within the regime” appeals to some among them but has never offered a credible political platform from which to attempt a seizure of power within the regime.

In the second camp, we find all those who, for different reasons, are still committed to the Khomeinist Revolution. In that camp the “hardliners” have been and, I believe remain, in a majority. Thus, whether we like it or not, it is Khamenei, and not Rafsanjani, Khatami or Rouhani, who set the tune in the Islamic Republic. In fact, each time Western powers made a deal with the Islamic Republic it was ultimately with Khomeini and, after him, Khamenei. It was Khomeini who drunk the “poison chalice” by ending the war with Iraq, not Rafsanjani who played “strongman” at the time.

The Obama “nuke deal” started with negotiations that Khamenei ordered before Rouhani became president. The result, the JCPOA (Barjam in Persian), was adopted after Khamenei gave his tacit consent.

Thus if Trump, or anyone else, wish to make a deal with the present regime in Tehran, the man they should talk to is Khamenei, not Rouhani, an actor playing the president. On Tuesday, that fact was demonstrated by Khamenei ordering Rouhani to eat humble pie and publicly recant on his boast about a summit with Trump.

The “hardline vs. moderate” comedy played in Tehran reminds me of the French Opera Buffa in which two seductive girls adopt opposite profiles. “No-no-Nanette” always says no to admirers but she ends up in bed with all of them. In contrast, “Yes-yes Yolanda” offers tantalizing “yes” but never goes the whole way. In the end, we find out that the two are, in fact, just one creature in two disguises, a witch bent on doing mischief.

Trump has been warned!

Amir Taheri was the executive editor-in-chief of the daily Kayhan in Iran from 1972 to 1979. He has worked at or written for innumerable publications, published eleven books, and has been a columnist for Asharq Al-Awsat since 1987. He is the Chairman of Gatestone Europe.

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In 2015 when President Hassan Rouhani advertised his “nuke deal” with the Obama administration as “the greatest diplomatic victory in the history of Islam,” few people realized that he had, in fact, endorsed a neo-colonial document that put key aspects of Iran’s economic, industrial, scientific and security policies under the tutelage of six foreign powers led by the United States.

For several reasons, the “nuke deal” did not provoke the popular explosion in Iran that some analysts expected. To start with no one had signed that deal which meant it was neither a treaty nor a binding international agreement but a wish list. Nor was it put through the legislative process to give it legal authority. More importantly, perhaps, the text did not offer a readily recognizable and concrete image of the humiliation the “Islamic Republic” had accepted in the name of Iran.

Rouhani’s euphoria that “even the Americans have recognized our right to enrich uranium” sounded good to some who did not know that the right to enrich uranium is recognized for all nations by international law. Having got away with that odious exercise, Rouhani and his team decided to do a similar favor to Vladimir Putin. This came last year when Rouhani flew to Kazakhstan to sign a Russian text on the Caspian Sea.

The text, in 24 articles, suffers from a crisis of identity.

It is not clear whether it is a treaty or a draft for a future accord. It offers no definition of the Caspian, either as a lake or a sea – a definition that would automatically establish its status under existing international maritime laws and conventions. It pretends to establish the legal status of the Caspian Sea without tackling the crucial issue of sovereignty.

In its preamble, the text refers to “changes and processes that have occurred in the Caspian region at the geopolitical and national levels”, and insists on “the need to strengthen the legal regime of the Caspian Sea.”

Leaving aside the confusion between “Caspian region” and “Caspian Sea” the text implies that a legal regime already exists but needs to be strengthened.

So, what is that legal regime?

It is shaped by three treaties between Iran, the Tsarist Russia and, finally, the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics in the 19th and 20th centuries. Under those treaties, Iran and Russia (in its two epiphanies) have joint sovereignty over the Caspian Sea. The treaties do not mention the figure 50-50 and, in reality for many decades, the Caspian was a Russian lake for all practical purposes. Nevertheless, the treaties show that Iran and Russia were the only two sovereign powers in the Caspian.

That could be challenged with the internationally recognized legal principle of change, notably by the emergence of “successor states” or “rebus sic stantibus” in Latin.

The Russian text does not do so. For if it did it would have to accept that the four Caspian littoral states that emerged from the disintegration of the USSR would have to share their half of sovereignty among themselves, leaving Iran’s share as unchanged.

To muddy the waters, the text, which, according to its first article, is the exclusive work of The General Department of Navigation and Oceanography of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, ignores the issue of sovereignty altogether and goes straight for ascertaining the share of littoral states in the ownership of the body of water.

In that context, Iran with the shortest coastline on the sea ends up with the smallest share, just around 11 percent.

However, sovereignty and ownership are two different concepts.

You may own an apartment in Paris and be recognized as proprietor. However, the sovereignty of the area in which your apartment is located belongs to the French Republic. Several Scottish islands are owned by individuals but are still under British sovereignty.

The relationship between sovereignty and ownership comes in numerous forms. The entire state of the Vatican is sovereign but located in the middle of the Italian capital Rome and subject to its municipal rules. The Republic of San Marino, on the Italian coastline has a similar status while Monaco’s real estate is 80 percent owned by foreigners without the princely family losing their sovereignty. Andora is owned by Andorans but under joint French and Spanish sovereignty. Initially, the Congo was the private property of Leopold I, the Belgian King, who, in the absence of a sovereign status, treated the vast territory as he pleased.

Sovereignty could also be exercised long distance. New Caledonia, in the Pacific Ocean, is under French sovereignty as are the Falkland Islands under the British, both being thousands of miles away from their respective sovereign authorities. Closer to the Caspian we have the Shah-i-Mardan enclave in Kyrgyzstan that is under the sovereignty of neighboring Uzbekistan to the west.

To make sure that this is an exclusively Russian document, the text uses Russian terminology, measurements and even pseudo-legalistic shibboleths instead of internationally recognized concepts, terms and references codified in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

What is the good of ownership, and property rights, if we do not know which sovereign authority shall enforce them?

Because this is a Russian text, in the preparation of which other littoral states played no part, the implication may be that Russia is the sole sovereign power, and thus ultimate arbiter of disputes in the Caspian Sea. If that assumption is correct, we may conclude that Russia has acquired a colonial advantage that it could not obtain even when Iran was weak, famine-stricken and war-broken under the Qajar Dynasty.

With this text, Russia secures two other advantages.

First, it gains control of pipelines transiting the Caspian Basin’s immense oil and gas reserves to world markets, notably Europe. That would push Iran, which is the economic route for those pipelines, out of competition. Russia will retain its principal card in facing Western powers.

Russia, already the only significant military force in the Caspian, will retain its monopoly by forbidding other littoral states to build a military presence with the help of non-littoral allies.

In trying to push this text through, President Vladimir Putin is acting like a tactician seeking quick advantage even though that may produce a strategic loss. Shaken by the consequences of their childish adventures, the mullahs of Tehran may swallow this Russian brew. However, I doubt that any future Iranian government worth its salt would not spit it out.

BY Amir Taheri Prominent Scholar Journalist. Mr. Taheri was the executive editor-in-chief of the daily Kayhan in Iran from 1972 to 1979. He has worked at or written for innumerable publications, published eleven books. Mr. Taheri is the most sought after guest by Farsi speaking media. He promotes global peace and stability through his various publications and speeches around the world.

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