Why the Islamist republic is far from being a presentable partner
What will the future policy of the Iranian regime look like? This question is on everybody’s mind after the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany cut a deal with the Islamic Republic in Geneva this past November.
Predictions about this dictatorship aren’t very difficult – on the contrary. Unlike the former Soviet Union or Putin’s Russia, representatives of the Islamic Republic like to talk whenever they find a microphone or a television camera. It also leaves traces of its meddling wherever it has caused chaos and destruction – sometimes intended and sometimes out of sheer incompetence. What lies ahead of us with the Islamic Republic is a direct outcome of the Geneva interim deal, an interim deal that has the potential to become a permanent one.
Meddling in Latin America
As a way out of the
impossibility to reach a permanent solution is a small, but significant part in the document that specifically allows extending the interim deal for another period of six months. Dragging on this interim deal in the coming years might become a new reality for a world community reluctant to pursue regime change in Iran – that would free Iran’s civil society from its ruthless dictatorship and the entire world of the most severe danger of our time for global security: a nuclear armed Islamist regime.
The fact that the international community was willing, in an appeasing manner, to treat the Islamic Republic as if it had turned overnight into a presentable partner while it is still the very same destructive dictatorship sends a fatal message to Iran’s leaders: they will feel emboldened. It is tempting of course to analyze how this will play out in the Middle East region, but more pressing to look at Iran’s meddling in Latin America.
The Tehran regime might actually take a short break from descending its neighboring countries in the Persian Gulf into chaos and instability as developments in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria are already moving to Supreme Leader Khamenei’s delight. For many years already the Islamic Republic has built a triple alliance in Latin America with Venezuela and Cuba. What started between these three regimes as an illegal collaboration in money laundering and evading sanctions several years back has now expanded into shared intelligence, areas of defense and security as well as energy.
Hugo Chavez is dead, but his regime isn’t. So what his successor Nicolas Maduro has continued to foster even beyond the already existing paramilitary cooperation between the two regimes is frightening. During the recent uprising in Venezuela a young woman, Genesis Carmona, was killed by armed pro-regime militias called Colectivos. Carmona was only 22 years old, a student and her nation’s beauty queen. For Iranian democrats Carmona’s tragic death strikingly resembled the shooting of Neda Agha Soltan during Iran’s Green revolution. And indeed the resemblance in tactic between the two deadly attacks has been picked up recently by the Washington Times in an illuminating piece on how exactly Maduro’s Venezuela and Khamenei’s Iran are collaborating in paramilitary fields.
Since 2009 several high level visits by the Iranian side have been made to Caracas – a time when Maduro was Foreign Minister – to enhance and exchange knowledge on asymmetric warfare and armed militias similar to Iran’s Basji forces – now an integral part of the Revolutionary Guards who are in charge of Iran’s nuclear weapons program and responsible for grave human rights abuses. What Iran is doing in Venezuela is out of its own playbook with Syria: moving a country where legitimate dissent is unfolding to the verge of civil war. And doing so by training and advising a paramilitary security apparatus after its own model of the Basji and IRGC.
Iran and Hezbollah
And of course where Iran shows its footprint terrorist proxy Hezbollah can’t be far away. Transforming Latin America into a secure operational base architectured in Caracas might very well be one of the Iranian regime’s goals. But what is the Islamic Republic’s long term strategy? Cultivating financial and military ties with Latin American allies could be a run up to replay the Cuban missile crisis – one educated guess could be passing nuclear weapons to Venezuela and/or Cuba. One other possible nightmare scenario could be terrorist attacks carried out on American soil.
Three years into the Arab uprisings the axis Tehran-Damascus-Beirut is evidently present. Though Hezbollah suffered significant damages – politically and militarily – and though the Assad regime has lost control of a significant part of the country, overland supplies of weapons through Syria remain an endangering factor for Israel. Other Middle East countries will be threatened as well through improved relations between Iran’s regime and Hamas. What should have been an epic disaster for Iran’s Khamenei has turned into a winning road for a politically bankrupt dictatorship – the Arab uprisings have largely swept away pro-Western authoritarian regimes without real democracy replacing them and kept pro-Iranian totalitarian forces largely in place. This will embolden the Islamic Republic especially in light of a significant military withdrawal in the region by the Obama administration. While some admirers of President Obama still argue that the Gulf retreat merely signals reaching the same level of military presence under both Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton, this comparison lacks one major difference: both Bush and Clinton took decisive and determined military action in the Middle East whenever US national security required it. President Obama has failed on this count – especially in Syria, but even to a degree in Libya. Celebrated by rogue dictators like Ali Khamenei, Hassan Nasrallah and Al-Qaeda.
Recently, Israel’s president Shimon Peres has warned against premature normalization of the relations with Iran. In his words, Iran “still is the greatest problem of our times”. Peres said that only when the interim agreement on suspending Iran’s nuclear program expires in July will it be possible to determine whether facts confirm the Iranian leadership’s pledge that it is not seeking to build nuclear weapons.
Saba Farzan is a German-Iranian journalist and Senior Fellow &Director of Political Studies at the Institute for Middle Eastern Democarcy, a London based think tank