Javad Zarif Woos the Arab Neighbors. Iranian Minister Sets out to Wean Gulf Emirates from Saudi Embrace

Javad Zarif Woos the Arab Neighbors. Iranian Minister Sets out to Wean Gulf Emirates from Saudi Embrace 

Debka 06-Dec-13 

Javad Zarif was the first Iranian foreign minister to go a-wooing of the Arab emirates of the Persian Gulf. He was determined to wean them from their historic allegiance to Saudi Arabia and turn them against the burgeoning Saudi military alliance with France an Israel. 

Kuwait was his first stop. He arrived there Sunday, Dec. 1 and, after visiting Oman and Qatar, announced to everyone’s surprise that he was extending his tour by another day to drop in on Abu Dhabi and Dubai. The Emirates, which hosts a large Iranian expatriate community, was the first Gulf nation to welcome the controversial interim nuclear deal Iran signed with six world powers on Nov. 24. 

But Zarif did not reach the capital he most wanted to visit, Riyadh. 

Saudi royals turned a deaf ear when he angled for an invitation, just as they ignored the suggestion by former Iranian President Hashem Rafsanjani, a close friend of incumbent president Hassan Rouhani, to travel to Riyadh and try his hand at mediating the dispute between the two governments. 

Wearing the same diplomatic smiles he used in Geneva, the Iranian foreign minister looked pleased with his welcome in the rest of the Gulf and, speaking from Doha Monday, Dec. 2, said it was high time for Shiites and Sunnis to join hands and bridge the schism in Islam. 

But DEBKA Weekly’s Gulf sources say that Zarif was just putting a good face on the negligible results he netted in all five goals he had set himself in the Gulf tour: 

Gulf support to help broaden sanctions relief 

1. Roping in the Gulf emirates for endorsing the first-step nuclear accord signed in Geneva. This would help tip the scales against the fierce opposition posed not only by Saudi Arabia but also by Iran’s radicals. (See DEBKA Weekly 613 of Nov. 29: Revolutionary Guards’ Schemes for Wrecking Geneva Deal and Ousting Rouhani and Zarif) 

President Rouhani and Foreign Minister Zarif hoped to firmly line up the Gulf Arabs before the detailed technical negotiations start early next year for determining which Iranian nuclear sites are to be frozen under the Geneva accord – when and how. 

The two Iranian leaders pin their hopes on Gulf backing as a valuable key for unlocking sanctions. 

The broader the Gulf support, they believe, the broader the expected sanctions relief – and the harder it will be for the accord’s critics at home to keep on fighting a deal that promises to substantially alleviate Iran’s economic distress. 

2. Achieving Goal 1 will contribute substantially to Goal 2, which is to consummate the second great achievement Iran carried off from Geneva after the recognition of its right to enrich uranium, and that was the Islamic Republic’s rating as a world power. To this end, Tehran needs a major international breakthrough, which could begin in the Arabian Gulf. 

Iran wants to come to the table of the technical discussions as well as the negotiations on a comprehensive accord with strong multinational backing. This would give Tehran a stronger hand than a solo appearance. 

Rouhani and Zarif are thinking in terms of attending the next negotiating rounds at the head of a broad unified delegation consisting of supportive emirates. 

Challenging Saudis as dominant oil power 

3. Rouhani and Zarif plan to isolate Saudi Arabia from most of its Gulf Arab neighbors and allies if its royal rulers persist in shunning Tehran and mistrusting its motives. 

4. They also intend to heap obstacles in Saudi Arabia’s immediate vicinity to impede its cooperation with France and Israel for political, military and intelligence campaigns to thwart the nuclear accord, pre-empt Iran’s nuclear aspirations and nullify the world power status promised by President Barack Obama. 

(See last DEBKA Weekly 613: US Makes Iran Strategic Partner in Six World Zones) 

5. They will also act to obstruct an Israeli or joint Israeli-French-Saudi military operation against Iran’s nuclear program. 

6. Jumping ahead to the next stage of nuclear diplomacy, the Iranian regime is aiming high, intending to challenge Saudi Arabia as the dominant force of the global crude market, on the assumption that sanctions on its oil industry are soon to be lifted. At the OPEC oil ministers meeting Wednesday, Dec. 4, Iran planned to put in a bid for the post of the 12-nation cartel’s secretary general next year and a bigger share in total OPEC output. Tehran is seeking strong support for these objectives from friendly Gulf oil producers. 

Mutual defense pacts and drinking water 

So what did the Iranian foreign minister offer the Gulf emirates to win their support? 

a) Mutual defense pacts, under which Iran pledges never to attack any of the Gulf emirates and guarantees military, naval and air force assistance for defending their regimes against internal or external dangers to their stability. These mega-rich oil sheikhdoms are increasingly conscious of their vulnerability to danger and were expected to be receptive to offers of a solid buttress. 

The Iranian proposal, if accepted, has the potential for breaking up and superseding the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) founded by the Saudi royal house to bolster mutual Gulf security. 

b) A nuclear cooperation accord between Iran and the Gulf emirates, to provide them with a nuclear umbrella and distance them from a potential Saudi – and possible Egyptian - nuclear shield. 

Such accord would also allay regional fears of nuclear accidents - especially at the Bushehr reactor and Arak, after it is finished next year - spreading poisonous radioactive pollution. 

c) High technology. Tehran offers to ease the arid Gulf region’s endemic shortage of fresh drinking water with large-scale water desalination plants. 

The emirs hemmed and hawed 

Zarif’s propositions did not elicit a single clear yes or no. 

The Arab rulers and foreign ministers of Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and Abu Dhabi hemmed and hawed, promised to look into them and send their answers at some later date. First, they demanded an assurance that Iran would stop meddling in their domestic affairs, especially in Bahrain. Their Iranian visitor tried explaining that Tehran’s support for Bahraini Shiites was purely diplomatic, with no military or subversive aspects, a claim that drew sardonic responses. 

Most of the Gulf nations have issues with Tehran, but they also find it mutually profitable to set them aside in favor of co-existence and thriving trade ties. 

As he hopped from one Gulf capital to the next Dec. 2-3, his colleague at home, Iran’s new intelligence minister Seyed Mahmoud Alavi provided a suitable backdrop by a stream of propaganda. 

Monday, Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and National Security (MISIR) “caught” Saudi intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan and the Israel Mossad chief Tamir Pardo “co-conspiring to produce a computer worm more destructive than the Stuxnet malware to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program.” 

Tuesday, the Saudi prince was again targeted with the claim of “a movement in the US Congress to investigate the role of Saudi Arabia including Prince Bandar Sultan himself for their involvement in the terrorist attack in the United States on September 11, 2001.” 

This report referred to “classified pages on the 9/11 Commission that would lead to the Saudi role and to Prince Bandar.” 

Only a year ago, then president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stood before the UN General Assembly and accused the United States of committing 9/11 itself. 

Every new leader taking his place in Tehran seems to need a propaganda line he can call his own.

Carving Syria up – II. Rev Guards Arrive to Set up Iranian Area of Influence in Syrian Kurdistan Debka 06-Dec-13

:Carving Syria up – II. Rev Guards Arrive to Set up Iranian Area of Influence in Syrian Kurdistan 

Debka 06-Dec-13 

The Kurdish question which rarely obtrudes on Western consciousness has become a conspicuous feature of Iran’s latest plans for Syria. 

This week saw Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) officers arriving in Kobani, Ayn al-Arab, Afrin and Qamishli, key towns of the autonomous Syrian Kurdish region of northern and northeast Syria. In the last two, they set up operations rooms. 

(See attached map - http://www.debka.com/dynmedia/photos/legacy/weekly/map614.jpg) 

This remote region has unique strategic value by virtue of its location. Its 3-4.5 million inhabitants belong to the community of greater Kurdistan, which stretches from parts of eastern Turkey through Syria into northern Iraq and over to northwestern Iran. 

Syrian Kurdistan’s northern limit runs along 400 kilometers of the Syrian-Turkish border. 

Anything happening in any of the four Kurdish national regions acts like quicksilver on the others and their environment. For instance, the development and prosperity enjoyed by the autonomous Kurdish Regional Government of northern Iraq (KRG) in the past decade, thanks to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, has inspired Kurdish brethren in Turkey, Iran and Syria to push harder than ever before for recognition of their rights with an unprecedented measure of success. 

Iran takes a leaf out of America’s Syrian book 

Violence has helped. Two armed Kurdish militias, the Turkish PKK (Kurdish Workers Party) and its Iranian counterpart PAJAK have for many years conducted terrorist operations against their central governments. 

In recent years, both set up command centers in the Qandil Mountains of northern Iraq, within easy reach of the targets they systematically harassed year after year in Turkey and Iran. 

Not so long ago, any Middle East expert who suggested that one day, Tehran would take the violent PKK and PAJAK under its wing would have been certified as insane. 

But the rush of groundbreaking events of recent weeks has made the wildest Middle East speculation look real. It took the brutal twists and turns of the Syrian war, the conclusion of a preliminary nuclear accord with Iran in Geneva, the race of the US, Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia to resolve the Syrian conflict, each according to its respective interests and the final clincher, the Obama administration’s steps for establishing a US area of influence in southern Syria. 

(See the leading article in this issue.) 

Tehran takes all Kurdish armed groups under its wing 

All these events came together to convince Iranian strategists not to settle for influence in Bashar Assad’s Damascus or for military intervention by their proxy, Hizballah, in the Syria war, but to take a leaf out of the American book and set aside a space for Iranian influence in the embattled country, like the wedge the Americans were carving out in southeastern Syria within the bounds of the Lebanese, Israeli, Jordanian and Iraqi borders. 

Syrian Kurdistan was chosen as Iran’s slice of the Syrian pie. 

Tehran’s ploy completes the country’s de facto partition into five sectors: The Kurdish region of the North, where IRGC officers have begun to set up shop; the north areas around Aleppo and in Damascus suburbs occupied by various rebel militias; the center and west which are held by Assad’s forces; the East and parts of the center overrun by Al Qaeda and its affiliates; and the South sector evolving as an area of US influence. 

To consolidate their grip on their chosen turf, the Iranians have in the last few weeks taken certain actions: 

1. Iran’s Al Qods Brigades and commander, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, have taken under their wing the entire gamut of armed and terrorist separatist Kurdish movements: the Turkish PKK, the Iranian PAJAK, the Syrian PYD (Kurdish Democratic Party) and its military arm, the PYG, promising them protection as well as filling their arsenals with all the arms and ammo they want. 

This is the first time in its decades’ long history that PKK has accepted military assistance from Tehran. 

Ceasefire pacts signed with Syrian and Iranian Kurdish separatists 

2. Iran has negotiated a truce with its own Kurdish PAJAK separatists after many years of reciprocal violence. This deal virtually shut the door against Saudi intelligence penetration through PAJAK for covert action against the Islamic regime. 

3. Gen. Soleimani has forged understandings with Syrian President Assad and his top generals for the halting of operations against the two native Kurdish militias, the PYD and PYG. 

For the first time, Syrian Kurds can live in their own autonomous region without fear of military persecution. 

4. Tehran has seriously upset Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s big plans for a peace pact with the jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan and an alliance with the Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani for curbing Iranian influence in Syria and Iraq and clipping Assad’s wings. 

5. By turning the long-lasting Kurdish question on its head, Tehran has inflicted on Ankara one of its most painful setbacks in recent years as well as a strategic reverse. Long lines of armed Kurdish forces backed by Iran are now strung the full length of Turkey’s 1,200-kilometer long borders with Syria and Iraq, three times that of the Syrian Kurdish region. 

6. IRGC officers have moved out of the Kurdish region and into the key towns of Aleppo, Hama and Homs, where they are taking control of the Kurdish neighborhoods. They are setting up Kurdish militias and arming them to fight rebel and jihadist forces. Assad has quietly approved this step.

Carving Syria up – I US Moves in on South Syria from Two War Rooms in Irbid, Jordan

Carving Syria up – I US Moves in on South Syria from Two War Rooms in Irbid, Jordan 

Debka 06-Dec-13 

In obedience to a White House directive, two US war rooms have been set up in Irbid, northern Jordan, to carry forward a plan for pro-American Syrian rebel forces to take control of a wedge of southeastern Syria, enclosed by the Lebanese, Israeli, Jordanian and Iraqi borders. 

(See attached map in second article) 

The two war rooms fall under Commander of US Special Operations Command, Adm. William Harry “Bill” McRaven, who is headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida. 

An American general, whose identity is kept secret for fear of an al Qaeda assassin, is posted on the spot. His job, supported by a team of US officers, is to operate the two war rooms and assign their tasks to the 12,000 American special forces and air force troops personnel posted in the Hashemite Kingdom. 

Their primary mission is to run the units charged with taking control of an area covering roughly one-tenth of Syrian territory. 

They will be fighting to prevent Al Qaeda’s Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS (The Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham) from reaching Syria’s borderlands with Jordan, Israel and Lebanon - or coming close to Damascus. 

A key part of Washington’s plan is to defend Syrian central government in the capital, including that of Bashar Assad, against Al Qaeda encroachment from the east. 

Obama promised Saudi King Abdullah a more proactive US role in Syria 

On the broader canvas, the pro-American enclave taking shape in southern Syria is additionally charged with standing in the way of al Qaeda elements seeking to reach Saudi Arabia via Jordan; prevent them linking up in Jordan with the Yemen-based AQAP (Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula); and block their path to the jihadist movement’s cells in Sinai, which operate in conjunction with the AQAP command. 

The need for two operational command centers instead of one stems from the separate Obama administration commitments to different Middle East governments and their internal ties. 

Operations Room 1 consists of US, Saudi and Jordanian army, special forces and intelligence officers. It was set up so that President Barack Obama could discharge his pledge to Saudi King Abdullah for America to stop “leading from behind” and move into the driving seat for the Syrian war. 

As first revealed by DEBKA Weekly 613 on Nov. 29, that pledge was contained in the packages of benefits the US administration extended to Saudi Arabia and Israel in the hope pacifying them and easing their concerns about the six-power nuclear deal signed with Iran in Geneva. 

This command center’s job is to organize, coach and spirit groups of fighters into Syria and oversee their combat activity. According to our military sources, around 1,000 fighters have gone in so far, most of them Jordanian. The Saudis are bankrolling the operation of these “Jordanian bands.” 

Saudis dance with two partners – at least 

However, DEBKA Weekly’s Gulf sources are not sure how far the Saudis are committed to collaborating with the United States, beyond posting officers to the first war room. 

Those sources note that the Saudis are functioning on two levels – working side by side with the Americans in the Jordanian war operations room, on the one hand, while also holding a quiet dialogue with Moscow on Syria’s future. 

A good picture of which way the winds are blowing in Riyadh was undoubtedly gained by Republican Senator Robert Corker of Tennessee, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and the first American official to be received by Saudi rulers in many months. 

He and Saudi intelligence director Prince Bandar Bin Sultan talked for three hours on Monday, Dec. 2. To finish his conversation with the US senator, Bandar was willing to delay his flight to Moscow and his date with President Vladimir Putin. 

Corker was also given interviews with Crown Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz, Interior Minister Mohammed bin Nayef and National Guard Commander Miteb bin Abdullah. 

Israel now predicts a long drawn-out Syrian conflict 

Operations Room 2 is manned by US, French, British, Israeli and Qatari officers, most of them members of elite commando forces. The funding comes from Qatar. 

One of the functions of the US general in charge of the venture is to coordinate the work of the two war rooms and make sure they don’t clash with each other or overlap. 

Israel is there as the only active military and logistic support supplier to the Syrian rebels and civilians stranded on the Syrian side of the Golan and certain parts of southern Syria. These relations have also evolved, mainly through the IDF, with the populations of the Wadi-ar-Raqqad River district and Raqqad town in the Israeli-Syrian-Jordanian triangle up to the little Syrian township of Saham al-Jawlan nearby. 

After consistently staying clear of the Syrian civil war, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon was the first Israeli official to finally confirm that Israel had begun extending humanitarian aid to villages a stone’s throw away on the Syrian side of the Golan. 

During a tour of inspection of the Golan Tuesday, accompanied by the head of the Northern Command Maj. Gen. Yair Golan and other officers, the minister said: “We are helping Syrian civilians face the winter, and sending baby food and other essentials to the Syrian villages of Golan which are under (Syrian military) siege and cut off from aid from any other source.” 

It was his opinion that the Syrian war would be long and drawn out before reaching a decision. 

The Israeli intelligence assessment of Assad’s prospects has therefore shifted in the light of the latest events. Until recently, they were sure that Assad would soon be gone.