Iran Dangles The Prospect Of Higher Energy Exports Amid Nuclear Talks

United States Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf told members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday, August 4, that Beijing has been pushing sales of its military drones to Arab countries while doing nothing to stem the flow of other Chinese-made drones to militias backed by Iran in the region.

"It is an irony, I am the first to say, that those UAVs that these [Iranian] proxies use are Chinese… They are not provided by the state, but the state doesn't attempt to curtail that flow," apparently implying that Tehran gets the drones from China and distributes them to its proxy groups across the region. 

She said that at the same time China sells its drones directly to the governments of the region. China has sold CH-4 drones to Saudi Arabia and Iraq, while the UAE has acquired the Wing Loong II, an armed unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) equivalent to the American MQ-9 Reaper.

“The regime in Tehran is itself so supremely isolated and not just because of our sanctions — it’s isolated because of its own actions, its own predatory destructive behavior within [the country] as well as the larger region,” she noted.

Many countries, including Israel, accuse the Islamic Republic of providing its proxies with drones and other military equipment, saying Iranian-backed forces in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Hezbollah in Lebanon as well as the Venezuelan government receive UAVs and other weapons. 

US-based think tank Institute for the Study of War quoted advisor to the Ukrainian President’s Office, Oleksiy Arestovych, as saying on Friday that Iran handed 46 drones over to Russia and that the Ukrainian government has already noted the use of these drones in combat in Ukraine.

At least a portion of the provided drones are older-generation “Shahed 129” heavy strike drones, which Russian forces may seek to use to attack US-provided HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System) in Ukraine, the institute said. 

The news has not been confirmed by any high-ranking Ukrainian military or government official yet, with some people saying there is yet no concrete evidence of Russia using Iranian drones in Ukraine.

Some analysts say that if it is truly happening, it can be a major development in Russia-Iran relations, whose military-to-military cooperation has started worrying other countries. 

US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan warned twice in July that Moscow appears to be looking at buying Iranian drones and Russian officers even visited a drone base in Iran’s Kashan to review their options. His statements hinted at possible training of Russian crews to operate the drones and said that this would cause more civilian deaths in Ukraine.

Late In July, an Iranian lawmaker said the military cooperation between Tehran and Moscow has upset the political equations of the global order, confirming Russia’s request to buy Iranian drones.

An adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky told Iran International on July 25 that Russia and Iran are allies in the Ukraine war and it won’t be a surprise if Tehran supplies drones to Moscow.

Referring to the Operation Breaking Dawn against targets in Gaza that started earlier on Friday, Lapid said that Israel will not sit idly by when there are those who are trying to harm its civilians and that the battle “will take as long as it takes.”

“Approximately four hours ago, the Israel Defense Forces — in cooperation with the Israel Security Agency — struck Islamic Jihad targets in Gaza. Among those killed were Taysir al-Jabari, one of the two most senior commanders in Islamic Jihad, as well as a cell preparing to launch an anti-tank missile attack against Israel,” he said.

“Israel carried out a precise counter-terror operation against an immediate threat. Our fight is not with the people of Gaza,” he said, adding that “Islamic Jihad is an Iranian proxy that wants to destroy the State of Israel and kill innocent Israelis. The head of Islamic Jihad is in Tehran as we speak.”

He was referring to the visit by Ziyad al-Nakhalah, the leader Islamic Jihad -- a militant outfit designated a terrorist organization by the US, EU, and UK. 

During the week, Nakhalah held meeting with several senior Iranian officials in Tehran including Supreme Leader's adviser Ali Akbar Velayati, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, and Kamal Kharrazi, the head of Iran's Strategic Council on Foreign Relations, as well as President Ebrahim Raisi.

As a new flare up of violence between Israel and Iran-backed Islamic Jihad began Friday, Esmail Ghaani (Qaani) was speaking at a memorial service for three servicemen killed in the Syrian war.

Ghaani repeated a recent refrain heard from other Iranian officials that Israel is in decline and said that “Hezbollah’s sons are making plans to bring down the last blow against the Zionist regime…and to realize the wish of Imam Khomeini to eradicate Israel from the map and the face of the Earth.”

But he also threatened the United States: “The enemies of [Iran’s] Islamic government, led by America and the Zionist regime should know that we will never stop self-sacrifice and will move forward on the path of resistance."

The Islamic Republic uses the terms “resistance” to refer to its regional foreign and military policy of arming and supporting militant groups, such as the Islamic Jihad, the Lebanese Hezbollah, and the Houthi forces in Yemen primarily for attacking Israel but also threatening Arab states friendly to the West.

“The honorable path of martyrs will be pursued until the complete destruction of the enemies of the Islamic system,” he said, meaning Iran’s Islamic Republic.

At the same time on Friday, the official Twitter account of the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) wrote, “We clearly say that we interfere whenever there is the issue of opposing Israel. After this also, wherever any nation or group fights Israel, we stand behind them and support them.”

While Israel launched a series of air attacks throughout Gaza, killing about 10 members of Iran-backed Islamic Jihad including its military commander Taysir al-Jabari, the leader of the group was visiting Tehran.

During the week, Islamic Jihad’s leader Ziyad al-Nakhalah held meetings with several senior Iranian officials in Tehran including Supreme Leader's adviser Ali Akbar Velayati, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, and Kamal Kharrazi, the head of Iran's Strategic Council on Foreign Relations, as well as President Ebrahim Raisi.

Ghaani became commander of IRGC’s extra-territorial Qods (Quds) Force in January 2020, when its former notorious commander Qasem Soleimani was killed in a targeted US air strike in Baghdad. The Qods Force manages most of Iran’s military, intelligence and even political affairs in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.

The Qods commander did not mince words in his speech threatening the US and Israel. “These two traitor and murderous regimes will receive a response in the shortest time for each crime they commit,” and added, “The Islamic Republic makes plans to respond to all crimes that America and the usurper Zionist regime commit and will give its decisive answer at the appropriate time.”

Ghaani pledged to continue support for Hezbollah, saying, “the victors of this battle will undoubtedly be the sons of Islam.”

When Iranian officials use the word Islam, it often means Shiites, as Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is portrayed as the leader of ‘Islam’. For Sunnis, however, who comprise the vast majority of Muslims, Khamenei is mostly seen as the leader of a sect that opposes their beliefs and traditions.

Prominent civil and human rights activist Narges Mohammadi, who has been transferred to the Women’s Ward of Tehran's Evin Prison after a recent open-heart surgery, said Thursday that some of the inmates have tested positive for Covid while several others have developed symptoms but have not been tested.

“Self-isolation is impossible given the high number of inmates and the small size of the women’s ward,” Mohammadi wrote in a letter from Evin which was published on her Instagram page.

“It is the duty of human rights activists and organizations not to remain silent about the violation of prisoners’ basic rights, to defend the legal rights of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience and their right to health, and to force the government to abide by human rights,” Mohammadi wrote.

She also added that currently there are over 50 political prisoners and prisoners of conscience at the Women’s Ward of Evin and the number keeps increasing. “These many inmates with various political and ideological affiliations are unprecedented in the history of the prison … This indicates increasing suppression by the government,” Mohammadi said in her letter.

Mohammadi has been to jail several times over the past two decades. She was freed from Evin Prison in September 2020 after serving more than five years when she had no contact with her husband and children for long periods of time. She was arrested again and sentenced to eight years in jail and 70 lashes by the Revolutionary Court on trumped-up political charges again in a five-minute trial in late January.

Ill-treatment of political prisoners and activists at Evin and other prisons such as Qarchak is not limited to denying them necessary healthcare. Sepideh Rashno, an anti-hijab protester who is reportedly held at a ward run by the IRGC at Evin, had to be taken to hospital to check for internal bleeding symptoms resulting from torture before her ‘forced confession’ was aired on state-run television last week.

In a message from the notorious Qarchak Women’s Penitentiary to the PEN Melbourne in June, Mohammadi and another rights activist, Alieh Motallebzadeh, urged the the international community to support efforts by Iranian civil society activists to establish democracy in the country.

Mohammadi and Motallebzadeh, both of whom are cofounders and chairs of the Defenders of Human Rights Center, say judicial authorities have been holding them at Qarchak Penitentiary with ordinary criminals including those serving time for murder and drug trafficking.

In another message from prison in June, Mohammadi called on right organizations to put pressure on the Islamic Republic for its crackdown on popular protests and said the international community should condemn the “killing of people on the streets” similar to pressure on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.

The most recent protests in Iran began on May 6 as the government drastically raised food prices, leaving tens of millions of Iranians in danger of facing hunger as inflation surpassing 40 percent has depleted their means to buy basic food.

Crackdown on protesters and persecution of human rights and political activists including women’s rights and anti-hijab activists and ill-treatment of prisoners has been on the rise since hardliner president Ebrahim Raisi took office last August which consolidated hardliners’ power over all the three branches of government.