More than six months after China brokered an agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia to normalize relations, the rubber finally may be meeting the road on Iran’s détente with its Arab neighbors. The mostly symbolic preliminaries have taken place; large numbers of Iranian pilgrims made the hajj to Mecca in June free of harassment by Saudi authorities, and ambassadors were exchanged last month. Now the harder business of finding common ground for cooperation can start. When rubber meets the road, however, friction and heat are involved, and Iran’s neighborly policy is no exception.
As far back as July, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia rebuffed Iran’s claims to a share of the offshore al-Durra gas field, asserting their “exclusive rights” to exploit it; last week at the UN General Assembly the Kuwaiti Prime Minister again publicly rejected Iran’s claim to a share of the gas field. More ominously, Iran’s Houthi clients in Yemen last week launched a drone attack across the Saudi border, killing four Bahraini soldiers and wounding several others. Riyadh and Manama kept their reactions low-key and Tehran wisely kept its mouth shut, but it is the first cross-border attack publicly linked to the Houthis in months. The Saudis’ first concern may be the degree to which they can count on US support in the face of such attacks, but they also will expect Iran to lean on its Yemeni clients to knock off such provocations.
As noted in the PersuMedia Daily Summary, the noisiest and least substantial brouhaha erupted just this Monday when in Isfahan a visiting Saudi soccer team refused to take the field against their Iranian opponent in protest of a bust of the late IRGC Qods Force Commander Qassem Soleimani prominently displayed on the sidelines of the pitch. (It will be remembered that Soleimani, dubbed “the Shadow Commander” by The New Yorker, was a gifted and charismatic Iranian military leader who organized resistance and terrorist operations and whom Western officials and media inflated into a sort of DC Comics supervillain.) Although Western and Arab governments could make a good case that Soleimani was a war criminal, among many Iranians—especially regime loyalists—he was respected and even admired as a war hero. Iranian media, which in the past have lionized Iranian athletes who forfeited matches rather than wrestle an Israeli competitor in international competitions, were quick to criticize the Saudi team for their “political” reaction to the statue.
The Iranian government so far has responded in a measured way to such turbulence in their neighborly relations with Saudi Arabia. At the UN General Assembly last month, Iranian Foreign Minister Hosein Amir-Abdollahian reaffirmed Iran’s commitment to returning to the JCPOA and condemned war as a solution to disputes. His hardline deputy Ali Baqeri-Kani went beyond such boilerplate to criticize those Iranians who exploit “values” to undermine negotiations, which is either a remarkable turnaround or breathtaking hypocrisy, considering his past support for “resistance” as an alternative to negotiations during the administration of Hasan Rouhani. Absent is the usual sturm und drang that is the Nezam’s stock in trade, with no threats directed at the Saudis or Kuwaitis for their temerity—although one loudmouth Iranian pundit was so impassioned by the soccer incident that he called for a missile strike on Aramco. For now, Tehran is playing it cool, and seems intent on building good relations with the Saudis and obtaining the financial and commercial benefits such relations may produce, no matter how chimerical.
But previously muffled rumbles of discontent with such policy are growing louder in Iran. Khabar Online, which is close to former Majles Speaker Ali Larijani, has noted that the advocates of “resistance” have grown more active again. Iranian hardliners, who at first celebrated the China-brokered deal with Saudi Arabia as a success for principlist President Ebrahim Ra’isi and a defeat for the United States, are growing impatient with the Arabs’ reluctance to immediately embrace the Islamic Republic, the slowness with which the economic benefits of détente are being made available, and with the government’s stoic silence in the face of what previously would have been interpreted as Saudi “insults.” Principlist cleric Jalil Mohebbi, demanding Tehran respond resolutely to the Saudi refusal to play ball in Isfahan, bitterly asserted that the agreement to normalize relations had served only the interests of Beijing and Riyadh. Moreover, there is a current of opinion in the Iranian media, encompassing both reformist and principlist analysts, that compares the Islamic Republic with Saudi Arabia and frets that Iran is being too passive and is falling behind in the regional competition for economic growth and influence.
Such rumblings have yet to affect policy. Khabar Online reported that the Ra’isi government was intent on limiting the influence of the advocates of resistance. But the real test may be coming as the United States tries to negotiate the normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. This is something that the Nezam cannot accept with equanimity, because it challenges its ideological tenet that the State of Israel is an imperialist imposition on the region that must be eliminated. Tehran also sees it as a security threat in that it empowers Israel to contain and threaten the Islamic Republic. As reported in the PersuMedia Daily Summary, an emerging consensus among observers in Iran is that such normalization is increasingly likely. Even the arch-conservative Kayhan, while spelling out the impediments to normalization of Saudi-Israeli relations, has warned its readers that such normalization could be announced sooner rather than later. If and when such an announcement is made, the Islamic Republic will have some hard decisions to make.
For now, the signals out of Tehran tend to play down the risk to détente. The UAE’s establishment of diplomatic relations with Israel did not prevent Iran from restoring relations with Abu Dhabi. Former Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki, who served in the government of President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, has said that Israel was not a factor in Iran’s relations with Saudi Arabia. Hamzeh Rahim-Safavi-Homami, CEO of the Institute for Islamic World Future Studies and the son of former IRGC Commander Yahya Rahim-Safavi-Homami, has argued that Iran cannot afford to obstruct the process of Israeli-Saudi normalization, which he judges to be near completion. President Ra’isi and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei have largely avoided condemnation in their public statements on the subject, instead preferring to warn that Muslim states that normalize relations with Israel are only hurting and diminishing themselves.
However, watch this space. Although Ra’isi and Khamenei were restrained in their comments (and both were publicly addressing an international audience), both also highlighted the continued importance of the need to “liberate” Jerusalem. “The first issue of Islam is the issue of Palestine,” said Khamenei. Moreover, as detailed in an analysis published on the website of the Middle East Institute last month, Iran has been working to strengthen coordination among its allies and clients in four “arenas” confronting Israel: Gaza, the West Bank, South Lebanon, and the Golan Heights. Given the importance Riyadh has placed on Israel making concessions on Palestine as a prerequisite to normalization of ties with Jerusalem, Tehran may choose to slow or halt progress toward normalization by trying to stir up enough trouble among the Palestinians that Israel responds with disproportionate force—provoking condemnation from the Arab states. Tehran followed a similar strategy in the 1990s to impede the “Peace Process,” encouraging such clients as Palestine Islamic Jihad to provoke Israel with a terrorist atrocity, knowing that Israel’s reflexive recourse to a violent lex talionis would bring all progress to a full stop.
For now, Tehran is playing its cards carefully and well. It is not attacking Saudi Arabia or the other Arab states for normalizing ties with Israel, merely warning—almost more in sorrow than in anger—that no good will come of it. It is not jeopardizing the potential for better relations with the GCC that may produce economic and security benefits for the Nezam. Khamenei and his lieutenants are watching and waiting, no doubt in part hoping, not unrealistically, that Saudi-Israeli normalization will fail due to its own contradictions and the lack of enthusiasm for normalization among Arab publics. They may also hope—rather less realistically—that the unprecedented domestic turmoil in Israel over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts to reduce the power of the Supreme Court may cause Israel to implode. (One would think that Tehran’s own success in suppressing successive waves of protest would make them skeptical of such outcomes elsewhere.) But whatever the calculations are that Khamenei and Ra’isi are turning over in their lizard brains, they are keeping their options open and their powder dry. The next few months may reveal how committed they are to détente with the Saudis and staying in good favor with China.
