Iranian President Hassan Rouhani used his address to the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday to lay out a new system of collective security for the Persian Gulf exclusively involving regional states termed the “Hormuz Peace Initiative.”

Aspects of the proposed security architecture were pre-emptively published in the Iranian media, which highlighted plans for the creation of a “joint domestic structure” to ensure the security of all regional countries, implying high-level cooperation between Tehran and its current adversaries in the Gulf, led by Saudi Arabia.

Tehran’s main selling point for this security blueprint is its claim to be predicated on UNSC Resolution 598 which brought an end to the war between Iran and Iraq in 1988. At the time, the resolution called for indigenous regional coordination to prevent future conflicts. According to President Rouhani, such cooperation would render the presence of foreign naval and other forces unnecessary.

“Security cannot be purchased or supplied by foreign governments. The peace, security and independence of our neighbours is the peace, security and independence of us. The United States is not our neighbour. The formation of any coalition and initiative, under whatever name, with the centrality and command of foreign forces is a clear example of interference in the affairs of the region,” President Rouhani said while addressing the General Assembly.

Throughout his speech, the president rebuffed the possibility of any further negotiations with the United States over its withdrawal from the JCPOA/Nuclear Agreement and called upon the states of the Saudi-led Gulf Cooperation Council to abandon their American and European patrons to instead join a new security architecture led by his country.

“It is the Islamic Republic of Iran which neighbours you and we have been long taught that neighbours come first. In the event of an incident, you and we shall remain alone. We are neighbours with each other and not with the United States. We are ready to spend our national strength, regional credibility and international authority. The solution for peace in the Arabian Peninsula, in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East should be sought inside the region,” the President said.

The ‘Hormuz Peace Initiative,’ will be seen in Washington as a challenge to its long-standing doctrine of maintaining military predominance in the Gulf which ensures its control of the movement of oil and natural gas and the vast economic power that flows from their sale.

Until 1979, the United States had enacted a  so-called “Periphery Policy” in the Middle East whereby allied non-Arab states, principally Israel, Turkey, Pakistan and Iran (then ruled by the Shah), would guarantee the security of the oil-producing Arab countries in the region, with the United States and Britain intervening only as a last resort.

This system received its first shock in 1979 when the Islamic Revolution overthrew the US-backed Iranian Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, severed relations with Israel and began supporting political revolutionaries throughout the Arab World, particularly in Iraq and the monarchies of the Persian Gulf.

With the loss of its valuable client, the United States instituted the “Carter Doctrine,” whereby any threat from a “foreign power” to Western access to the region’s energy would invite immediate and direct military intervention by the US.

The high point of American deployment to the Persian Gulf came with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, which saw close to a million US and other allied personnel stationed in Saudi Arabia and neighbouring states, causing significant social disquiet.

The first decade of the 21^st century saw a renewed expansion of America’s military footprint with its invasion and occupation of Iraq, ruled until 2003 by Saddam Hussein. Washington’s attempts to fashion a pro-American client regime foundered on both armed Iraqi opposition and Iran’s much deeper bonds with the Shi’a population who became politically dominant for the first time in the country’s history.

The long, drawn-out US withdrawal from Iraq, ending in 2011, was largely coloured by its concerns over increasing Iranian assertiveness. Despite its occupation of the country, Iraq has since seen administrations more economically and politically inclined towards Tehran than Washington, creating a contiguous arc of influence in the region extending to Syria and Lebanon, often described as the “Shi’a Crescent.”

The 2011 uprising in Bahrain further fuelled Western fears that Tehran and its allies in Baghdad would push for the political empowerment of the Gulf’s Shi’a populations and see US and other Western forces expelled altogether from the region.

While the United States is not dependent on the Persian Gulf for its energy needs, a sudden reorientation of the Gulf states’ investment towards Iran would not only immensely empower it, but see the loss of a vital source of stability for the global financial system, in which various Gulf states have massive and longstanding investments.

However realistic it may be at the moment, the Hormuz Peace Initiative represents the ideal end goal of a long game the Iranians have been playing for many decades.

L'articolo The Iranian Long Game proviene da InsideOver.

A Royal Navy warship has escorted a British oil tanker out of the Persian Gulf as three Iranian vessels attempted to intercept it, according to the UK Ministry of Defence. The claim has been strongly denied by the Iranians.

The tanker ‘British Heritage’ had been in Saudi waters for several days due to concerns it may be seized upon entering Iranian waters. Tehran has threatened Britain with retaliation over its seizure of an Iranian oil-tanker off Gibraltar on July 4, which it claims as proof that the UK is participating in the US-imposed blockade of its oil exports. The EU, of which the UK remains a member, continues to oppose the sanctions. Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif described the UK’s actions as ‘piracy.’

It was against this background of flaring tensions that US Chief of Staff General Joseph Dunford outlined plans on Tuesday for an American-led naval coalition to oversee maritime traffic in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea. “We’re engaging now with a number of countries to see if we can put together a coalition that would ensure freedom of navigation both in the Straits of Hormuz and the Bab al-Mandab… I think probably over the next couple of weeks we’ll identify which nations have the political will to support that initiative and then we’ll work directly with the militaries to identify the specific capabilities that’ll support that,” General Dunford said in his press conference explaining the initiative.

According to General Dunford, the US would occupy a leadership and surveillance role while most of the patrols would be carried out by allied states in support of their own commercial vessels.

The original announcement of the coalition had been overshadowed in June by Iran’s downing of a US surveillance drone in what it claims were its territorial waters, and a series of attacks on oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman which the US and its allies have blamed on Iran. Tehran has long relied on its control of the Straits of Hormuz to put pressure on the United States and its allies. In response to the US campaign of ‘maximum pressure,’ it has repeatedly warned that other regional states’ energy exports will be prevented if its own shipments are stopped.

Last week a proposal was raised in the Iranian Parliament, calling for the imposition of a toll on ships using the Strait. The move has so far been considered symbolic, but signals the degree to which control of international shipping routes is becoming a factor in the crisis between Washington and Tehran. The straits of Hormuz and Bab al-Mandeb each see the passage of roughly 19 million and four million barrels of oil a day respectively, making them among the most strategically sensitive shipping lanes in the world.

The Bab al-Mandab, which separates Yemen from the Horn of Africa, controls the most direct route between Asia, Africa and Europe, and by extension, affects traffic through the Egyptian-controlled Suez Canal.

The Houthi-movement in Yemen, fighting the US-backed Arab Coalition, has on occasion targeted Saudi and Emirati warships off the coast and frequently threatened to disrupt traffic in the Red Sea in retaliation for the Saudi blockade on the country.

So far, public international support for the US initiative has been sparse. Boris Johnson, the lead candidate for the ruling Conservative Party has suggested a British government under his leadership would actively participate in the US sanctions regime. His rival, Jeremy Hunt, has also announced to the House of Commons he would ‘consider’ future US requests for military assistance in the region. A similar undertaking has been given by the Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

Such a coalition would struggle to gain United Nations approval, as the US sanctions on Iranian energy exports are in violation of the Iran nuclear deal or JCPOA which continues to be supported by the remaining signatories including China, Russia and the European Union. The French government has ramped up negotiations with Iran in the last week to find ways of keeping the accord alive.

L'articolo US Plans Naval Coalition To Police Waters Amid Armed Escort for British Tanker proviene da InsideOver.

Iran’s government announced on Monday that within ten days, its stocks of enriched uranium will rise above the level permitted by Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The nuclear agreement was struck between Tehran and the US, Russia, China, UK, France and Germany in 2015.

Tehran’s warning was principally directed at the three leading EU states who, the Iranians allege, have shown insufficient resistance to US sanctions which were reimposed last year. The sanctions have been consistently expanded to cover most of Iran’s primary industries. Any country that continues to trade with Tehran without an American-issued waiver faces the threat of secondary sanctions, shutting them out of the US market.

In January of this year, Germany, France and the UK introduced the ‘Instrument in Support of the Trade Exchange,’ (INSTEX) as a means to circumvent the US financial system and continue trade with Tehran. However, US trade officials speaking to Bloomberg in recent days have raised the possibility of applying sanctions to the EU’s counter-sanctions instrument, effectively killing it on arrival.

Such a measure would further pressure the Iranians to follow through on their threat to withdraw from the JCPOA altogether, risking renewed European support for the American sanctions-regime.

It was against this backdrop of escalating pressure, and a wave of still unexplained attacks on oil-tankers in the Gulf of Oman, that, last week, Iran took part in the annual summit of what may now be its best chance of breaking Washington’s economic strange-hold; the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) .

Speaking to the assembled heads of government in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek, Iranian president Hassan Rouhani declared that his country would grant preferential trading terms to any SCO-member state that continues or expands its economic ties with Tehran. He also called upon member states to collectively challenge US domination of the world’s economic and financial structures.

“The US government over the last two years, violating all the international structures and rules and using its economic, financial and military resources, has taken an aggressive approach and presents a serious risk to stability in the region and the world,” he said.

The joint declaration by the states represented in Bishkek crucially included the aspiration to build what it termed a “multi-polar world.” In other words, this means a world without American and European economic dominance.

Largely ignored by much of the western press, the SCO is an international political, economic and security alliance led by China and Russia, formed in 1996 along with Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan. Since then, its membership has grown to include Uzbekistan in 2001, as well as India and Pakistan in 2017. The Turkish government has also shown an increasing interest in abandoning its long-frustrated bid for EU membership and joining the SCO instead.

Iran, along with Belarus, Mongolia and Afghanistan, holds observer status, having applied in 2008 for full membership of the bloc. Tehran’s candidacy initially had the backing of Russia, but not China, on the basis that states subject to United Nations sanctions are barred from membership.

However, Iran now finds itself far from alone in facing sustained economic pressure from the United States. US and EU sanctions on Russia have steadily intensified and remained in place over the continuing conflict in eastern Ukraine. Perhaps more crucially, US-Chinese trade relations have come under unprecedented strain, with the US president threatening ever steeper tariffs on goods manufactured in China as a means of securing favourable terms in a future trade agreement.

Since the lifting of UN sanctions after the 2015 nuclear agreement, Iran has feverishly pursued ambitious infrastructure projects and economic agreements with leading SCO-member-states. The port of Chabahar, just outside the Persian Gulf, is being jointly developed by Iran and India to grant Afghanistan and other Central Asian states maritime access to the Subcontinent.

In the wake of the US’ unilateral withdrawal from the JCPOA last year, Iran quickly signed a preliminary preferential-trade agreement with the Eurasian Economic Union, a bloc led by Russia and comprising mostly former USSR states. The agreement is set to enter into force this summer and talks on Iranian membership of the EEU are reportedly in the advanced stages.

Perhaps most crucially for Tehran, however, is its central position in Chinese ambitions for its Belt and Road Initiative. The SCO’s annual summit, particularly this one, has increasingly become a forum for Beijing to advocate its program of integrating states across Europe and Asia through infrastructure development and investment.

This year, perhaps in reaction to American trade-policy, Beijing’s tone on Iranian membership has noticeably improved, with Xinhua News Agency quoting president Xi Jingping pledging to further develop economic ties regardless of the nuclear deal’s fate.

Unlike the years preceding the JCPOA, Iran is just one of several significant Eurasian states subject to sweeping US sanctions-regimes, creating a common interest in pursuing trade among Eurasian economies through institutions and channels outside of American control.

With American policy unlikely to shift, Iran is increasingly pinning its hopes for economic security on the East, having tried, and now it seems, failed, at rapprochement with the West.

L'articolo As Iran’s Ultimatum to Europe Ticks Down, Asia Waits in the Wings proviene da InsideOver.