Iranian President floats rare Israeli trial balloon

 

By James M. Dorsey

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It will take a lot more to convince Israel and its supporters that newly elected Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian means business and can deliver on his proposal to dial down tensions between the two countries.

 

“Let’s create a situation where we can co-exist. Let’s try to resolve tensions through dialogue,” Mr. Pezeshkian said as hostilities between Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shiite militia, and Israel escalated, threatening to draw Iran into a regional war.

Speaking to journalists in New York hours before the opening of this year’s United Nations General Assembly, Mr. Pezeshkian offered “to put all our weapons aside so long as Israel is willing to do the same.”

It was not clear what weapons Mr. Pezeshkian was referring to. He may have been pointing to Iran’s nuclear programme, given the Islamic Republic’s threshold status as a nuclear weapons state, his effort to revive nuclear negotiations with the United States and other world powers, and repeated Iranian calls for a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East.

Israel has never acknowledged possession of nuclear weapons and has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT but is widely considered to be the Middle East’s only nuclear-armed state.

President Masoud Pezeshkian was flanked by Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on the left and former foreign minister Javad Zarif as he reached out to Israel. Credit: Iran International

Mr. Pezeshkian’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, quickly denied the president’s outreach. 

“Mr. Pezeshkian never made such remarks. Contrary to what has been reported, Dr. Pezeshkian strongly condemned the crimes of the Zionist regime in Gaza and its aggression against Lebanon… He stressed that these crimes are in violation of all human and international standards and must be stopped," Mr. Araghchi said.

Even so, Mr. Pezeshkian’s offer, embedded in denunciations of Israel’s “barbarism,’ constituted a rare Iranian willingness to engage Israel and acknowledgment of its intelligence and surveillance-driven military prowess that has been on full display since the killing in Tehran in late July of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh.

Credit: Pgurus

Mr. Haniyeh was in Tehran for Mr. Pezeshkian’s inauguration as president.

Iran blamed Israel for the killing and has vowed to retaliate but refrained from doing so to give Gaza ceasefire negotiations a chance and avoid being blamed for a potential breakdown.

Israel has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility for the killing.

“We’re not seeking to destabilize the region,” Mr. Pezeshkian said.

To be sure, Mr. Pezeshkian’s offer is part of a charm offensive designed to build bridges with the West and persuade the United States and Europe to ease or lift sanctions that have significantly weakened Iran economically.

To highlight the president's focus, Mr. Pezeshkian included former Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and others in his delegation, who played key roles in negotiating the 2016 international agreement that curbed Iran's nuclear programme.

 

Addressing the General Assembly, Mr. Pezeshkian said Iran was ready to revive negotiations about its nuclear programme. “If the deal's commitments are implemented fully and in good faith, dialogue on other issues can follow," Mr. Pezeshkian said.

The United States and the EU have long wanted to include in the negotiations Iran’s support for armed non-state militants and ballistic missiles programme.

Former US President Donald J. Trump withdrew from the nuclear agreement in 2018, denouncing it as a “bad” accord and reimposing harsh sanctions.

Iran has since enhanced its uranium enrichment far beyond the limits set in the agreement and reduced its breakout time – the amount of time needed to produce enough weapons grade material for a nuclear weapon – to as little as two weeks.

The agreement capped Iran's uranium enrichment at 3.67 per cent purity and its stockpile of this material at 202.8 kilogrammes.

In another rare gesture, Mr. Pezeshkian met with a US-based Israeli academic and author of a book on Iranian Jewry, who joined an inter-faith meeting hosted by the Iranian president.

Lior Sternfeld, an associate professor of history and Jewish studies at Pennsylvania State University, said Mr. Pezeshkian knew in advance that he would join the gathering. Israeli officials approved Mr. Sternfeld’s participation, which the Israeli academic used to raise the plight of the Hamas-held hostages in Gaza.

Unlike Mr. Sternfeld, most of the other Jewish participants were ultra-Orthodox Jews who oppose Israel and Zionism on theological grounds and have long interacted with Iran.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a 2018 news conference in Tel Aviv. Credit GPO

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, widely suspected of wanting to extend Israel’s wars for as long as possible, is unlikely to capitalize on Mr. Pezeshkian’s potential opportunity. Instead, the prime minister is certain to ignore or dismiss Mr. Pezeshkian’s offer, although Iran could figure prominently in his address to the United Nations later this week.

The pro-Israel American Jewish Committee (AJC) opted to respond to Mr. Pezeshkian’s UN address rather than his opening to Israel. Even so, its response reflected hardline Israeli thinking.

The committee denounced Iran as “single-handedly responsible for undermining regional stability in the Middle East and around the world, pouring funding and weapons into terror groups that are committed to death and destruction…all while building nuclear weapons in violation of international law and the JCPOA,” the Iran nuclear agreement.

“The global community – led by the United States – must come together to stand up to this regime as it continues to fuel conflict in the Middle East, spreads its sphere of influence even further into Europe and, increasingly, in Latin America, and engages in a multifront effort of destabilization around the world,” the AJC said.

Abetted by Iran’s often bloodcurdling rhetoric, Mr. Netanyahu projects Iran and its non-state allies, including Hamas and Hezbollah, the world’s best armed non-state militia, as mortal threats to the Jewish state.

He views Iran as a puppeteer who pulls the strings of Hezbollah, Hamas, the Yemeni Houthis, and armed Iraqi Shiite groups, that threaten Israel from all sides.

A US drone strike killed Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani. Credit: Wikipedia

Iranian Quds Force commander, General Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a US drone attack in Baghdad in 2020, described the encirclement as a “ring of fire” that would suffocate Israel by attacking it from all sides.

Rejecting Mr. Netanyahu’s assertion, Mr. Pezeshkian insisted that its non-state partners ”don’t take orders from anyone. It’s not like Yemenis are waiting for us to tell them what to do or what not to do.”

The Iranian president would need Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Islamic Republic's Supreme Guide, to publicly support his proposal to persuade Mr. Netanyahu and his supporters, particularly in the United States, to take it seriously.

That may be a tall order, even though Mr. Pezeshkian would likely have had Mr. Khamenei’s tacit approval of the offer. Mr. Khamenei is probably hedging his bets as he monitors what response Mr. Pezeshkian gets.

Last week, Mr. Khamenei accused Israel of committing “shameless crimes” against children, not combatants, and called on Islamic nations to work together to wipe out “this malignant cancerous tumor from the heart of the Islamic community in Palestine.”

Mr. Khamenei’s statement turned Mr. Pezeshkian’s potential opening into a stillborn baby and left unanswered the question whether Iran was speaking out of both sides of its mouth or locked into a process of two steps forward, one step backwards.

Iran joins Arab and Musim call for a two state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Credit: OIC

The statement reinforced Iran’s positioning as a boogeyman that binds Israel and the United States and justified Mr. Netanyahu’s dismissal of the Islamic Republic’s repeated suggestions that it would abide by whatever resolution Palestinians accept to their conflict with Israel, even if it involved recognition of Israel.

Last November, Iran signed a statement calling for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict issued by Arab and Muslim heads of state and government gathered in Riyadh.

Speaking to Mr. Sternfeld, the Israeli academic, Mr. Pezeshkian said Iran would stop brandishing the banner of resistance once there was a resolution of the conflict acceptable to the Palestinians.

Mr. Pezeshkian’s arms proposal aligns with Hezbollah’s insistence that it will stop its attacks once Israel agrees to a Gaza ceasefire.

To be sure, Hezbollah, rather than Israel, initiated the hostilities to support Hamas a day after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7 of last year.

The coming days will demonstrate what capabilities Hezbollah retains after thousands of its associates were wounded when their pagers and walkie-talkies exploded, disrupting the group’s communications.

In addition, Israel wiped out the command of Hezbollah’s elite Ridwan force and has pounded its weapon storage and key missile facilities.

The pounding and the disruption of communications have not stopped Hezbollah from firing hundreds of rockets deep into Israel in response to the attacks.

Even so, Mr. Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister, vowed, "The Islamic Republic will certainly not remain indifferent to the recent Zionist regime's aggression against Lebanon and will fully defend and support Lebanon."

Mr. Araghchi did not detail how Iran would support Hezbollah but, for now, that is likely to involve humanitarian aid, weapons supplies, and funding rather than boots on the ground to avoid the escalating tensions evolving into an all-out regional war.

Dr. James M. Dorsey is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, and the author of the syndicated column and podcast, The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey.