Washington luring Turkey into Iran’s lap

Ailing Arabs caught between Iran (L) and Turkey (R)  -- by Syrian cartoonist Fahd Bahady

Turkish strategic affairs analyst Ali Hasan Bakir believes the precipitous rapprochement between Turkey, the region’s Sunni heavyweight, and Shiite powerhouse Iran could be aimed at giving “a Sunni cover to America’s nuclear deal with Iran.”

The nuclear agreement between the 5+1 world powers and Iran was reached in Geneva last Sunday.

Ankara-based Bakir tells today’s edition of the Saudi daily Asharq Alawsat: “There has been frantic efforts of late by Iran and the United States to cajole Turkey by offering to iron out some of her regional hurdles.

“Iran, for instance, played a key role in pushing Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to open up to Turkey.

“This, in addition to addressing some of Turkey’s foreign policy concerns such as reducing secular tensions in the area and fighting terror. That could pave the way for closer bilateral cooperation to take Ankara’s interests into consideration as regards Syria or at least cut its losses in case [Bashar al-] Assad stays in power for a short while.”

Bakir is of the opinion “Iran’s aim is to win over Turkey and isolate the Gulf Arab states at the regional level and secure a Sunni cover to America’s nuclear deal with Iran -- a deal that strongly exasperated Saudi Arabia…”

Enhanced cooperation between Turkey and Iran would improve regional stability, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on a visit to Tehran this week.

The countries’ foreign ministers demonstrated their growing unity Wednesday by jointly calling for a cease-fire in Syria ahead of peace talks between its civil war factions set for January 22 in Geneva.

Additionally, Davutoglu announced that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani would visit Turkey in January.

“It is true that we have some differences with neighboring countries, but the tenets of our foreign policy have not changed,” Davutoglu said at a press conference with his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, who will be visiting Kuwait, Oman and Saudi Arabia shortly.

In Syria, Iran is supporting the Assad regime, while the Turkish government is backing the opposition.

Davutoglu said Tehran and Ankara need not wait two months for Geneva-2, but “before then, the ground should be paved for a cease-fire that will also contribute to the success of that conference.”

Rouhani said in a meeting with Davutoglu yesterday the Syria conflict “has no military solution, and the country’s crisis should be ended through serious negotiations.”

The Turkish foreign minister also called for greater energy cooperation between the two countries.

“At a place and time where some try to instigate sectarian conflicts, dialogue between Iran and Turkey is the most important dialogue in the region,” Davutoglu said.

Asharq Alawsat quotes unnamed Turkish sources as saying their country’s spymaster, Hakan Fidan, shapes Iran policy and “is not an enemy of Iran.”

Arabs & Israel feel shortchanged by ‘Great Satan’

America's Obama Obama and Iran's Rouhani (from algemeiner.com)

Led by Saudi Arabia, Arab governments are dumbstruck by Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers and the Islamic Republic’s acceptance on the global stage.

Not so Israel, which calls the deal a “mistake,” and not so the overwhelming majority of political analysts and commentators in the Arab media.

Fahmi Howeidi, dean of these Arab public opinion-shapers, concludes his think piece today for Aljazeera TV news portal with a sentence saying: “The long and short of the new balance of power in the Arab world is this: Iran tops the list of winners but there is no mention of the Arabs anywhere.”

Tariq Alhomayed, writing today for Asharq Alawsat, the Saudi newspaper of records of which he was editor-in-chief, believes “the deal with Iran is more treacherous than 9/11.”

U.S. President Barack Obama overnight defended the deal between Iran and world powers on Tehran's nuclear program.

The six-month interim deal struck in Geneva on Sunday saw Iran agree to curb some of its nuclear activities in return for sanctions relief.

The accord has been generally welcomed but Israel's prime minister called it "a historic mistake".

The West has long suspected Iran's uranium enrichment program is geared towards making a weapon, but Tehran insists it only wants nuclear energy.

The UN, U.S. and European Union had imposed a raft of sanctions on Tehran.

"Huge challenges remain, but we cannot close the door on diplomacy, and we cannot rule out peaceful solutions to the world's problems," the BBC quoted Obama as saying during an event in San Francisco.

"We cannot commit ourselves to an endless cycle of violence, and tough talk and bluster may be the easy thing to do politically, but it's not the right thing for our security."

Earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced an Israeli team led by national security adviser Yossi Cohen would travel to Washington for talks on the deal.

"This accord must bring about one outcome: the dismantling of Iran's military nuclear capability," he said.

Israel has not ruled out taking military action to stop Iran developing the capability of a nuclear bomb.

Saudi Arabia -- Iran's regional counterweight -- cautiously welcomed the deal yesterday.

Under the deal which will last six months, Iran would receive some $7bn in "limited, temporary, targeted, and reversible [sanctions] relief" while a permanent agreement is sought.

Key points of the deal include:

• Iran will stop enriching uranium beyond 5% and "neutralize" its stockpile of uranium enriched beyond this point
• Iran will give greater access to inspectors including daily access at Natanz and Fordo -- two of Iran’s key nuclear sites
• There will be no further development of the Arak plant, which it is believed could produce plutonium
• In return, there will be no new nuclear-related sanctions for six months if Iran sticks by the accord
• Some sanctions will be suspended on trading in gold and precious metals, on Iran's car-making sector and its petrochemical exports
• Frozen oil sale assets will be transferred in installments, bringing in some $4.2bn of extra revenue.

Howeidi, in his piece today for Aljazeera quotes unnamed Iranian experts as telling him:

• The deal recognizes Iran as a regional nuclear power with the right to continue its uranium enrichment program for peaceful purposes
• The Iranians and Americans rushed the deal through to sidestep adverse pressure by Israel, France and some Gulf Arab lobbyists
• The Iranian-American understandings go beyond the nuclear program and the easing of economic sanctions. “The most important understanding is over Iran’s participation in the fight against terrorism in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan”
• The deal allows Iran to receive some $7 billion in sanctions relief; about $1.5 billion of the frozen assets were promptly released to Tehran “by Asian banks in South Korea, Malaysia and Indonesia as early as last Sunday morning”
• Shell, which was complying with the sanctions, was the first oil major to resume work in Iran.

Howeidi sums up the most important features of the agreement between the 5+1 world powers and Iran as follows:

1. It seems a new axis is taking shape in the region comprising Iran and Russia, the two countries that played a key role in aborting an American military strike against Syria.
2. The U.S. will henceforth “rely on Iran and Turkey to keep the peace in the region now that Egypt has lost its standing in the Arab world.” Iran is on the ground in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon and to some degree in Yemen, where it is supporting the Houthis. Turkey on the other hand has its role in Syria, Iraq and the Caucasus in Central Asia. Ankara also has its strong economic ties with many Arab countries.
3. There are still question marks over a sectarian war between the Sunnis and Shiites in the Arab world, over Iran’s support of the Islamic movements in Palestine and Lebanon and over future links between Cairo and Tehran.
4. Israel is in a win-win situation. Syria’s chemical weapons are being buried and checks on Iran’s nuclear ambitions are being put in place.
5. Iran’s clout in the Gulf, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon is on the ascendancy. The Gulf, which usually banks on the U.S. is now less prone to challenge Iran. That’s particularly true of Saudi Arabia, which lost its gamble on America’s air strike on Syrian regime forces and on mobilizing Sunni forces against Tehran.
6. “The long and short of the new balance of power in the Arab world is this: Iran tops the list of winners but there is no mention of the Arabs anywhere.”

In the view of Saudi journalist Tariq Alhomayed, “fallouts of the deal on the region – specifically on Saudi Arabia and its Gulf Arab partners – will prove more treacherous than the consequences of the 9/11 terrorist outrage that pummeled the United States in 2001.

“I am not dramatizing. It is not so because the Obama Administration sold the region down the river or that the administration turned its back on its historic partnership with Gulfite Arabs.

Many forget that America betrayed Israel, her sacred cow in the region.

Alhomayed says Iran’s chief objective since the days of the late Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlevi was to become the “region’s policeman.”

The Islamic Republic will eventually rid itself of all economic sanctions and achieve its primary objective of creating nuclear weapons “much as India and Pakistan did under Bill Clinton, another Democratic Party president.” 

Iran, “Ayatollah Morsi” and Obama’s extended hand

Portraits of the writers by Tehran Times (top) and image grabs of their letter as published by Fars

While Barack Obama keeps his hand extended to talk Iran into scaling back its nuclear ambitions, Tehran is urging Mohamed Morsi to set up an Islamic theocracy in Egypt.

Some 17 Iranian Establishment figures have formally offered to help the Egyptian president duplicate the Islamic Republic of Iran’s system of governance in his country.

Their written offer, penned in Arabic, was made public today by Iranian news agency Fars.

The 17 Iranian scholars, ulema and politicians include former Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati, currently the senior advisor on International Affairs to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei; former parliament speaker Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, notable Shiite figure Ayatollah Seyyed Mostafa Mohaqiq Damad, and Farhad Rahbar, chancellor of the University of Tehran.

The gist of what the Iranians figures tell Morsi is this:

We witnessed the Iranian people successes ensuing from the Islamic Revolution’s victory under the late Imam Khomeini. We also witnessed the experiences Iran gained in its bitter struggles against Zionism and World Arrogance in the 34 years since the Islamic Revolution.

From such a perspective, we put forward the following:

• The developed world’s material successes have been innumerable, but it still faces countless crises for straying from the veracity of Islam.
• The West is now rediscovering the centrality of religion and the importance of upholding its role and values in society.
• The principles of Islam are a reference point to all problems whether at national or international levels.
• Faith and belief in divine power allow humans to be successful and happy in life and in their afterlife.
• Any system of governance that formulates its policies, builds its institutions and devises its plans under divine guardianship is bound to succeed.
• The Islamic Republic of Iran set forth on the basis of the centrality of Islam and its permeation of all government organs and affairs of its executive, legislative and judicial branches.
• The Islamic Republic of Iran’s system of governance was put to a referendum in April 1979, when a 99.2% majority approved it. Seven months later, an overwhelming majority endorsed the ensuing constitution.
• The Iranian people have not looked back in the 34 years since. They struggled against World Arrogance and Islam’s enemies, maintained their independence from Western and Eastern powers and supported the downtrodden all-over the world, chiefly the oppressed Palestinian people.
• Iran’s political, economic, cultural and building accomplishments have been spectacular. Despite the eight-year (1980-1988) war (with Iraq) and economic and political sanctions, Iran has eradicated poverty in its urban and rural areas and made impressive scientific and hi-tech advances. It stayed the course throughout – first under the late Imam Khomeini and now under Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
• Official statistics -- by UNESCO on the eradication of illiteracy, by Science-Metrix on trade volume and science and technology productivity, and by UNIDO (United Nations Industrial Development Organization) on industrial development -- attest to Iran’s sensational progress.

Iranian scholars, ulema and scientists reiterate their readiness to put the wealth of their knowledge and expertise at the service of your esteemed government and the honorable Muslim people of Egypt.

In light of the aforesaid, we urge Your Excellency -- as a wise doctrinaire at the helm of a country proud of its past and glorious Islamic civilization – to make Islam the underlying bedrock of running your state affairs.

Extended hand

Editorially, columnist Rajeh el-Khoury, writing today for the independent Lebanese daily an-Nahar, says he is astounded how U.S. President Obama is sticking to the policy of the “extended hand” to Iran without Tehran giving the slightest indication of “unclenching its fist.”

Obama has been trying to make diplomatic headway with Iran over its nuclear program for ages. The result has been a more defiant Iran.

Khoury suspects Washington and Tehran have been playacting all along.

“It is in America’s vital interest to keep the Iranian scarecrow in the Gulf and the region,” Khoury writes. Proof is a recent congressional report showing that weapons sales by the United States tripled in 2011 to a record high, driven by major arms sales to Gulf Arab allies concerned about Iran’s regional ambitions.

When the P5+1 – the U.S., China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany – meet next with Iran, “Saeed Jalili, the Islamic Republic’s chief nuclear negotiator, and Wendy Sherman, his American counterpart, will share a big laugh because the playacting continues with matchless success.”  

Azhar rebuke & Syrian shoe greet Iran’s Egypt foray

From top: Ahmadinejad greeted by Morsi, next to the Grand Sheikh and then gloomy after the upbraiding

It was not exactly “veni, vidi, vici” (ecclesiastical Latin for “I came, I saw, I conquered”).

It was more like “I came, I saw, I tried” for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as he ended the first visit by a president of Shiite Iran to Egypt since the Khomeini Revolution in 1979.

He arrived in Cairo Tuesday for a summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). But his priority was to try and thaw long, frigid ties with the Arab world’s most populous nation following the election of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi as president in June.

Morsi gave Ahmadinejad a red-carpet welcome on the tarmac at Cairo airport, shaking his hand, hugging and exchanging a kiss on each cheek.

In the days he was in Cairo, Ahmadinejad called for a strategic alliance between the two regional heavyweights to counter Western domination and promote unity in the Islamic world. He even offered Egypt a “big credit line.”

But Egypt's presidential spokesman Yasser Ali yesterday said an end to the Syria crisis is a condition to restore Cairo’s diplomatic relations with Tehran.

Additionally, Sunni-Shiite tensions dominated talks between Ahmadinejad and Egypt's most prominent cleric Mohamed Ahmed el-Tayeb, the Grand Sheikh of al-Azhar mosque and university, who gave the Iranian leader a dressing down on a string of issues.

Al-Azhar is the highest seat of religious learning in the Sunni-Muslim world.

According to a sum up of the talks posted on al-Azhar’s website, al-Tayeb told Ahmadinejad:

• Al-Azhar mosque and university have over a millennium-long history. Over half a million men and women students from 103 countries are enrolled at the university, which teaches all roots, branches and philosophies of Islam without exception

• Two of our ulema are among those attending this meeting. Their respective specialties are two Shiite philosophers, theologians and scholars, namely Sadr ad-Din Muhammad Shirazi (1572-1640) and Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (1201-1274).    

• “Allow me to say we are extremely disappointed to hear ceaseless insults hurled at the (Prophet’s) Companions and the Believers’ Mothers, God bless them. That’s totally unacceptable.” (Those figures are widely resented among Shiites because they are seen as having pushed aside Imam Ali ibn Abi Taleb, the prophet's son-in-law, who Shiites consider his rightful successor. The dispute over succession is at the root of the centuries old split between Islam's Shiite and Sunni denominations.)

• “We absolutely reject the extension of Shiite reach” in Sunni countries and in Egypt.

• “Despite all what al-Azhar sees and hears of the insults hurled at the Companions and Aisha – God bless them – and Imam Bukhari, we don’t want to engage in a dispute we all can do without.”

• Iran must give its Sunni citizens their full rights. Citizenship is indivisible according to modern law and Islamic Sharia.

• A word about (Iran’s) meddling in the affairs of Bahrain and the Arab countries: The loyalty of Bahrainis should be to their homeland. No one should interfere in the Bahrainis’ internal affairs or in the affairs of Gulf Arab states.

• Immediate action is needed to bring a halt to bloodshed in beloved Syria.

As the Iranian president walked past the ancient al-Hussein mosque near al-Azhar, a man believed to be Syrian attempted to hurl a shoe at him.

Ahmadinejad in tears next to Sayyida Zaynab's tomb

Unperturbed, Ahmadinejad later visited the mosque and mausoleum of Sayyida Zaynab in the capital's Old Cairo district, where he cried beside the Muslim matriarch's tomb.

Sayyida Zaynab was the daughter of Imam Ali, the central figure of Shiite Islam and the cousin of Prophet Muhammad.

Ahmadinejad greeted the mosque's superintendents with hugs and kisses. After praying inside the mosque, he headed to the adjacent mausoleum where he shed tears and prayed next to Sayyida Zaynab's tomb.

Editorially, Mohammed bin Abdellatif Aal ash-Shaikh, writing for today’s edition of the Saudi daily newspaper al-Jazirah, says the Grand Sheikh of al-Azhar must have “greatly embarrassed” Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood.

“He is a stumbling block hindering Egypt’s move away from its traditional political positions toward rapprochement with Iran. That’s what the Brotherhood’s Egypt is trying to do.”

Ash-Shaikh recalls, “The Brotherhood was the first Sunni group to applaud Khomeini’s takeover in Iran. It sent a delegation to congratulate him on his return to Tehran and considered his accession to power a triumph for Islam and Muslims…

“At the same time, the Muslim Brothers want to draw closer to Iran, the Number One enemy of Gulf Arab countries, to sponge off financial aid from them. The Brothers’ links with Iran, in other words, are meant to pump off cash” from the Gulf Cooperation Council partners. Except that the Grand Sheikh of al-Azhar Mohamed Ahmed el-Tayeb will continue standing in their way.

Egypt’s famed talk show host Imad Adeeb, writing for the leading Saudi daily Asharq Alawsat, says al-Tayeb told Ahmadinejad in the face, “Stop persecuting the Sunnis of Iran. Respect the security of Gulf Arab states. Don’t back Bashar’s regime in his campaign against Syria’s Sunnis.”

Adeeb notes, “The Egyptian press and TV channels did not welcome Ahmadinejad. The masses did not crowd the streets to greet him. What was supposed to be a historic visit had nothing historic about it. The dream proved a nightmare. The signals from political and religious forces were disappointing…

“Ahmadinejad had hoped the Egyptian capital would compensate for the imminent exit of Assad’s Damascus from Iran’s sphere of influence. The Cairo visit dissipated that hope.”