By all accounts, US President Donald Trump’s decision to dismiss his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has been received in Tehran’s ruling circles as the probable end of the policy of “accommodation with Iran” designed and applied by former President Barack Obama.
Despite Trump’s repeated hostile remarks on the Islamic Republic, the faction built around President Hassan Rouhani continued to believe that the new American administration could still be influenced in favor of “accommodation with Iran”.
Several members of the Obama administration played a key role in injecting that belief into the Iranian official analysis. According to Iranian Foreign Minister Muhammad-Javad Zarif the belief was put to him by former US Secretary of State John Kerry as late as last month on the margins of the Security Conference in Munich. The same line was taken by Valery Jarrette, one of Obama’s key advisers and a strong supporter of “accommodation with Iran”. The continued presence of more than a dozen Obama leftover officials in the State Department and the National Security Council under Trump lent credibility to the analysis.
Zarif and his group, known as “The New York Boys,” also believed that Tillerson’s background as a senior oilman might persuade him to take a longer view of Iran and its immense oil reserves. The fact that Tillerson adopted a less hostile tone vis-a-vis Russia, now emerging as the main foreign protector of the Iranian regime, was also seen in Tehran as a sign that he might succeed in restraining Trump in his threat of tough action against the Islamic Republic.
Leaving aside all such speculations, could Tillerson’s departure become a game-changer as far as US policy on Iran is concerned?
At first glance, the answer could be yes.
Tillerson had no history of hostility towards the ruling mullahs of Tehran. But his successor, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, a rising star of the Tea Party and an intellectual heavyweight of the American “new Right” has a 20-year history of campaigning against the Khomeinist regime. In fact, Pompeo built part of his reputation as a would-be strategist by developing a coherent position vis-à-vis Iran which he has classified among “rogue regimes.”
However, it must be noted at the outset that policymaking in the Trump administration does not follow the classical pattern in which the State Department, the National Security Council, the Pentagon and The Treasury develop ideas in consultation with the “think tanks” and various lobbies before agreeing on a common position that is then presented to the President as a policy option.
That classical pattern was first disrupted by Obama who, on more than one occasion, publicly disowned his own Secretary of State by “instructing” him to give more concessions to Iran. Trump is using the precedence set by Obama by making policymaking even more of a personal privilege for the president.
So, Tillerson or Pompeo, what matters is what Trump will decide in the end.
The sacking of the one and the appointment of the other only offer an indication of the direction which Trump’s thinking on Iran is taking.
Whether or not a change of direction is in the cards will quickly become clear.
The first test is likely to come within weeks as the so-called P5+1, that is to say the five veto-holding members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany, is scheduled to hold a joint meeting with Iran to review progress made in the implementation of the Comprehensive Joint Plan of Action (CJPOA), more commonly known as “the Obama nuke deal”.
On several occasions, Trump has indicated that he isn’t interested in such meetings which are designed to keep the CJPOA alive at least as a “process” which is what Iran wants above all. Keeping the “process”, even if only in name, would mean that neither the P5+1 nor Iran would do anything that might cause tension in relations. As far as Iran is concerned, the “process” will pin down the US to a position of immobility for the remaining portion of Trump’s tenure until Tehran allies in the US, that is to say the democrat Party, regain control of the Senate in November and get into pole-position to win the White House in 2020.
So far Trump, and despite pressure from the European Union has not taken a clear position on the putative session between the P5+1 and Iran. Instead, he has suggested a broadening of the scope of the “dialogue” with Iran to include “all issues of concern” which have not been fully spelled out.
However, the issues that Trump has hinted at could be divided into five categories.
The first category is humanitarian and concerns the continued holding by Iran of eight American citizens and the mortal remains of a former CIA station chief in Beirut and a former FBI agent kidnapped in an Iranian island.
The second category, concerns Iran’s overall human records, especially the holding of hundreds of “prisoners of conscience” among them an unknown number of new converts to Christianity whose cases are adopted by US evangelical movements close to the Republican Party. In 2017 Iran ranked number-two in the world for the number of prisoners and executions. To that must be added what Trump has designated as “suppression of freedoms” as highlighted in last December’s non-violent uprising in more than 120 Iranian cities.
The third category deals with Iran’s allegedly hegemonic ambitions in the Middle East, notably in Yemen, Bahrain, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, not to mention smaller operations financed against Egypt, Tunisia, and Kuwait. The US would want Iran to also stop financing and arming the various branches of Hezbollah including those set up in Latin America, but most notably the one operating in Lebanon, and stop writing cheques for Palestinian militant groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine. All that would mean the dismantling of what Iran’s “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei has labeled “The Resistance Front.”
The fourth category of Trump’s putative demands concerns Iran’s ambitious missiles project. General Muhammad-Ali Aziz Jaafari, Commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), often boasts about Iran as “the missiles superpower” of the Middle East. In a meeting with military commanders last year, Khamenei ordered them to “continue and speed up” the missile project. “Build as many missiles as you can, as fast as you can,” he said.
Western analysts believe that while Iran’s short-term and medium missiles may make sense in military terms, the long-range missiles being developed make no sense unless they are designed to carry nuclear warheads. Spending billions to manufacture missiles that can carry payloads of 100 kilograms to a distance of 3000 kilometers is bizarre if the warhead is nothing but ordinary explosives. Such missiles make sense only if they carry nuclear material with a high capacity for destruction.
And that brings the whole thing back to the fifth category which concerns the demand for a full cessation of uranium enrichment by Iran as agreed upon by former President Muhammad Khatami’s administration in 2003.
With or without Tillerson, the Trump administration was set for a showdown with Tehran. Tillerson’s departure may hasten that showdown. Trump’s apparent success in forcing North Korea’s Kim Jong-on into at least a tactical retreat might give Pyongyang’s allies in Tehran some food for thought.
