Iran

The recent events in Afghanistan have made us think we know what regime collapse looks like. Militias roaming the streets, soldiers scrambling to helicopters, up against the clock to escape the anarchy below. But in some instances, the reality can be far more mundane. Across from Afghanistan’s own border, another Islamic theocracy — Iran — is struggling to manage a dangerous water shortage. As one hardline Muslim regime arose in Central Asia this year, another could yet be at the very beginning of its fall. In July, during the worst drought in half a century and scorching heat of over 120°F, protests erupted in the oil-rich province of Khuzestan as a water crisis that has been slowly bubbling for decades hit boiling point.

Question: When is a New York Times exclusive not a New York Times exclusive? Answer: On Sunday, when America’s paper of record stole my scoop. It sounds bizarre, but it’s true. Last February, I revealed top-secret details of the killing of the Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in the pages of London’s Jewish Chronicle, the world’s oldest Jewish newspaper. Among the revelations — given to me by impeccable sources that I know well — were that the top Tehran official had been killed by Mossad using a remote-controlled gun that weighed one ton and had been smuggled into Iran piece by piece over several months.

‘Death to Khamenei. Death to the dictator.’ Iran’s new president, Ebrahim Raisi, is sworn in today against a backdrop of protest, the sound of chanting echoing in his ears, whether literally or figuratively. The chants are often about the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, but are also directed at the regime as a whole. ‘Clerics get lost’ is another favorite. Street demonstrations began three weeks ago in the province of Khuzestan but spread to many other places, including the capital, Tehran. People are angry about water shortages and the wretched, broken state of the economy. The question now is whether the protests will build and, if so, whether Raisi will live up to his terrifying reputation and crush them.

The US and other western countries are faced with a dilemma: how to bring to justice a man with the blood of thousands on his hands when you have to do business with him. Ebrahim Raisi’s path to the presidency of Iran is strewn with corpses. He comes to office this month already under American and European sanctions for the mass murder of prisoners in 1988. Some 5,000 may have been killed, though we can only guess at the true number of dead. It was a crime against humanity in the strict legal meaning of that term. At an earlier stage in his career, Raisi is said to have personally supervised the torture of dissidents, but in the 1988 case his responsibility was bureaucratic. He was a grim fanatic, eager to carry out orders. He was — and remains — Iran’s hanging judge.

The president is a placeholder for the people who really run the country. The elections were rigged. And most of the American media cheers along. No, not the United States: Iran. The peace-loving, centrifuge-spinning, flag-burning regime has a new president, Ebrahim Raisi. The Biden administration did promise us a new era in US-Iranian relations, and here it is: Raisi will be the first Iranian president to take office while under sanctions for mass murder. In the 1980s, Raisi was a young regional prosecutor. He was part of a four-man ‘death committee’ which ordered the disappearance and killing of thousands of the Islamic revolution’s enemies. You may be shocked to hear human rights’ groups claiming that due process was frequently ignored during this judicial massacre.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. President Biden may have promised that ‘America is back’, but the United States’ decades-long shadow war with Iran never left. Last month’s reciprocal strikes in Iraq and Syria, and a further 10 rockets launched at a US base in Anbar Province last week, were notable only for their normalcy. Far from being Biden’s ‘Hour One Crisis’, this kind of geopolitical hair-pulling via high explosives is all too normal in the post-Iraq War, post-Arab Spring hash of the Middle East. Two American contractors and at least one Iraqi Shia militiaman are now dead. More casualties are likely to come in the weeks ahead. This first Biden counter-strike was no more than violent messaging, perhaps primarily to a domestic audience.

We should pay attention when someone like H.R. McMaster, the former national security adviser, says that ‘it’s a possibility’ Israel will attack Iran’s nuclear facilities before President Trump leaves office. McMaster was using a television interview to tell a future Biden administration it would be a mistake to revive the Iran nuclear deal, which he said had been ‘a political disaster masquerading as a diplomatic triumph’. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has always argued that the agreement — ‘based on lies’ — gives the ayatollahs cover to build a nuclear bomb.

‘Come in.’ Burly, brisk and maskless, Mike Pompeo indicates a chair before the marble fireplace. ‘It’s all right if we’re six feet — or two meters — apart.’ We are meeting at the State Department the day after Pompeo’s return from Qatar, where US negotiators have opened discussions with the Taliban and other Afghan factions on an end to the war in Afghanistan. It’s also the day before the signing of the Abraham Accords between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain. Cheerful and perhaps a little tired, Pompeo exudes forceful confidence: a man who knows what needs to be done. As Secretary of State since 2018, Pompeo has been the strategist who has translated Trump’s generalities into the specifics of policy.

On September 15, representatives from the oil-rich Kingdom of Bahrain will meet Israeli leaders at the White House to sign a historic peace deal. It will normalize relations between the Muslim state and the Jewish one, not long after the United Arab Emirates concluded a similar pact. Expect more such 'normalization deals'. They supplement other White House initiatives, such as the deal it brokered between Serbia and Kosovo, which includes both countries establishing closer relations with Israel. The deals are significant for several reasons. First, they represent a common regional front against the Iranian threat, which has been developing beneath the surface for some time.

The Trump administration has the first successful foreign policy of any administration since that of George H.W. Bush. It must be stopped.This, incredibly, is the message from the Democrats. And that, disastrously, is what will happen if Joe Biden wins the elections. Get ready for the revival of the failed foreign policy of the Obama administration, and brace yourself for the return of the Iran Deal.Visionaries like Obama, Susan Rice and Ben Rhodes thought it would be smart to have the Muslim Brotherhood in charge of Egypt. They thought it would be strategic to smash up Libya because the French asked nicely. Obama reckoned he had ‘bonds of trust’ with Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, an Islamist and neo-Ottoman imperialist.

American alliances and security commitments tend to live on long after the world has changed. Many of our far flung military bases are legacies of a Cold War that ended decades ago. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Nato alliance became all but obsolete, so it eagerly embraced conflicts in the Balkans, Libya, Syria and other locations far from the Central European theater it was originally designed to protect. However, none of these holdover security commitments seem as absurd as US military operations in the Persian Gulf during a COVID-19 oil market.As recently as last month, the United States was keeping two aircraft carrier battle groups deployed near the Persian Gulf.

In a roundabout way, coronavirus may have been responsible for the deaths of two American service personnel and a British soldier in a rocket attack in Iraq on Wednesday. This triggered a prompt US military retaliation — American forces launched strikes at five sites in the early hours of this morning — and the prospect now is of an escalation while the rest of the world is consumed with a global health crisis. What's going on? It was Gen. Qasem Soleimani’s birthday on Wednesday and a Shiite militia — probably Kataib Hezbollah — chose to mark the occasion by firing Katusha rockets at Camp Taji, the US base just north of Baghdad.

This article is in The Spectator’s February 2020 US edition. Subscribe here. ‘Get lost ayatollahs!’ ‘Death to Khamenei!’ The bravery of the anti-government demonstrators in Tehran is incredible, each one knowing that their actions could end with a bullet or a noose. I reached one through their favored encrypted app, Telegram, the interview arranged by a leading Iranian opposition group outside the country. ‘Elias’ — not his real name of course — is 25 and a postgraduate politics student in Tehran. The security forces were everywhere, he told me; everyone was very afraid. Still, he went on, ‘There is only one way this ends: toppling the regime.