Iran's Behavior Will Count In Coming Months, Say Saudi Columnists

Bahai community leaders Fariba Kamalabadi, 60, and Mahvash Sabet Shahriari, 70, were handed new 10-year sentences in December after having served 10 years previously on charges of threatening national security.

”The two women have spent many days of their lives in prisons for being Baha'i. No one should be harassed or persecuted just because of their beliefs and religion," reads a statement signed by journalists, lawyers, former political prisoners and activists inside and outside Iran.

The group said the accusations against the women are “baseless”, the ‘trial’ conducted in November lasting just one hour. At the time, the Baha'i International Community said it was "an unbelievable injustice”.

It is four years since the two ladies were released from their first decade-long sentence, and activists including Shirin Ebadi and Atena Daemi, say the two are being persecuted on “unfounded charges".

The Shia clergy consider the Baha’i faith as a heretical sect. The Baha'i community, who number around 300,000 in Iran, are systematically prosecuted, discriminated against, and harassed. They cannot hold jobs in the public sector and are sometimes sacked from their jobs in the private sector under pressure from authorities.

In September, the BIC reported 245 incidents of persecution over 32 days, with arrests and imprisonment, the destruction of homes and confiscation of properties, raids on private and business premises, beatings, the denial of medication to detainees and the denial of higher education to more than one hundred young people.

Human rights defenders and international institutions always consider the behavior of the Islamic Republic of Iran in dealing with Baha’i citizens as a "systematic violation of human rights".

General Yahya Rahim Safavi was echoing sentiment expressed by all forces in Iran who are considered “Principlist” or loyal to Khamenei, who for years has espoused a policy of siding with China and Russia against the United States.

China appeared to be the power that brokered a deal between Tehran and Riyadh to restore diplomatic relations after seven years of open animosity and rivalry. One Iranian commentator said Sunday that the agreement signed in Beijing was not really a bilateral deal, but a tripartite agreement between Iran, China and Saudi Arabia.

In fact, Tehran and Riyadh had been negotiating since 2021 in Baghdad, with Iraqi mediation and could have restored relations without Beijing’s mediation. Former Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafal al-Kadhimi in an interview with Asharq Al-Awsat published Sunday, says that most of the talks took place in Baghdad.

At this point we do not know what brought China into the picture, except assuming that either Iran or Saudi Arabia insisted on it. If the demand came from the Saudis, it could mean one thing, showing displeasure with the Biden administration, which is left picking up the pieces.

Khamenei’s advisor Safavi in his remarks did not repeat the typical rhetoric of war and confrontation, advising that Iran and Saudi Arabia should exhibit rationality for the sake of West Asia. He said that restoration of bilateral ties was not against any regional countries. But he quickly added that it is natural for the United States to be worried and try to disrupt it.

Speculations abound in Iranian media about the potential dividends of peace with Saudi Arabia. Some see it as an Iranian victory to potentially disrupt a possible Saudi peace deal with Israel. Others speak of economic benefits for the Islamic Republic, going as far as claiming that Iran, Saudi Arabia and Russia can create a powerful oil cartel with Chinese backing and put the West on the defensive.

Safavi in his remarks also mentioned a similar outlook. “Iran should regard the West’s entanglement in Ukraine and the Taiwan tensions as an opportunity and based on shared interests with Russia and China move ahead with a clear strategy, given US threats against all three countries.”

The quick face-about of Iran hardliners and Khamenei loyalists regarding Saudi Arabia is being highlighted by their rivals, the reformists, who point out that there was no need to attack the Saudi embassy in Tehran in January 2016 and create tensions for seven years.

They argue that hardliners were calling for the destruction of the Saudi monarchy and equating the country with “Zionists”, calling it a US puppet. Meanwhile, Tehran spent tens of billions of dollars to finance the war in Yemen against Riyadh and provoked the ire of Persian Gulf Arab states.

Now, facing more international isolation and a broken economy, the Khamenei camp is suddenly praising friendship with Riyadh, something they could have done all along.

Safavi insisted that the agreement with Saudi Arabia was “a political earthquake” and the end of “American hegemony in the region”. We this deal, the “post-American era starts in the Persian Gulf region.”

He went on to say that “The Chinese are determined to become the top global economy by 2030 and this agreement brokered by the Chinese is the second big blow by China against America.”

The attacks that started three months ago have continued without any apparent effort by the government to seriously pursue the perpetrators or explain to terrified parents and students what was happening in so many schools.

In its statement, the ministry attributed some of the poisoning attacks to “pranks” by students using “foul smelling and harmless substances” in an attempt to get their classes dismissed.

“Among the detainees there are individuals with hostile motivations,” the statement said, adding that these individuals meant to cause fear and panic among the people to shut down schools and cast the blame on the regime.

“These individuals are under investigation to reveal their possible connection with terrorist organizations such as the monafeghin,” the statement said. Iranian authorities always refer to the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK) as monafeghin (hypocrites).

The statement reveals very little about the arrests but two days earlier the local channel of the state television in Fars province aired the so-called ‘confessions’ of a man and his daughter arrested and accused of attacking schools with N2 gas canisters. The statement provided no names for those arrested or any other information.

Many ordinary Iranians have been suspicious of involvement of the regime itself, or religious extremists protected by the regime, in the school attacks and call the acts “state terrorism”.

“There is strong suspicion that the purpose of the attacks is quashing the Woman, Life, Freedom movement by instilling fear among girls and their families,” an umbrella teachers' association said while calling the attacks “bioterrorism” and demanding Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and other top religious figures to condemn the attacks expressly and decisively.

Diaspora Iranian held protests Saturday in 70 cities around the world to demand action to stop the school attacks.

The ministry said in its statement that there is a “considerable drop” in school poisoning attacks although seven more schools were affected on Saturday and tens of students had to be taken to hospital.

Attacks were reported in southwestern Khuzestan province where four schools were targeted. Tens of poisoned students had to be taken to hospitals also in southern Fars, western Kordestan and in northern Gilan provinces.

In a report Saturday, the judiciary claimed that “less than ten percent” of students reported poisoned so far had inhaled “an irritant gas which is not of weapons grade or deadly” and the remaining ninety percent were only affected by stress and other psychological factors.

In an article entitled “Casting Light On Psychological Operations Of Criminals In Student Poisoning Incidents” on Tuesday, the hardliner Mashregh news website accused a banned teachers’ association of using the attacks to wage psychological war against the Islamic Republic to revitalize the protest movement.

The article claimed that it was the MEK that described the school poisonings as ‘chemical attacks’ for the first time and alleged a connection between MEK and union activists who also referred to the incidents as chemical attacks on schools.

Earlier this month, the association urged its members and others to stage protests to demand urgent resolution to school attacks as well as teacher’s own problems including a wage increase for the next year that takes the factor of inflation into account.

In response to the association’s call, teachers and parents held rallies in dozens of cities and chanted slogans such as "death to the child-killing regime".

“Think-tanks of security and intelligence bodies are projecting their own responsibility over the poisoning of students and building new legal cases against union and civil activist,” Mohammad Habibi, spokesman of the Iran Teachers’ Trade Association, said in an Instagram post Saturday.

Habibi vowed that teachers would continue to defend “our children and their achievements [in the protest movement].” “Our message to them is clear: we will not withdraw [against pressures by the security forces].”

Ambassador Abbas Mousavi was called to the foreign ministry and told that Saturday morning local time a warplane continuously flew near the Azerbaijani border for more than 40 minutes at a distance of 3-5 kilometers.

Azerbaijan called the incident “provocative and unfriendly.”

A statement issued by Baku said that the Islamic Republic also held “large-scale military drills last year along the Aras river near the borders of Azerbaijan.”

An attack by a gunman on Azerbaijani embassy in Tehran in January that killed the missions security chief led to heightened tension between the two countries.

Relations have been tense since 2020 when Azerbaijan defeated Armenia in a war and recaptured territory occupied by Armenian forces since the early 1990s. It then took further military action in 2022 trying to occupy territory in Armenia proper, threatening to cut off Iran’s link with its northern neighbor. Iran has repeatedly warned Baku not to attempt to change international borders.

Tehran also accuses Baku of harboring Israeli intelligence and military elements that plan to use its territory in a possible attack against Iran’s nuclear installations.

However, Azerbaijan's ambassador-designate to Israel Mukhtar Mammadov said recently that his country would not allow Israel’s military to use its territory as a base for a possible attack against Iran.

Mammadov also rejected reports that Azerbaijan would allow the Mossad to set up a branch in Azerbaijan to monitor what is happening in Iran.

Diplomatic relations between Tehran and Riyadh had been severed since January 2016 when pro-government vigilante groups attacked the Saudi embassy in Tehran and the consulate in Mashhad. Since then, many moderate state officials and media commentators were accusing the hardliners who are currently in control of the government of being behind the attacks.

Welcoming the idea of resumption of ties between the two neighbors, reformist politician Mohammad-Reza Javadi-Hesar told Etemad newspaper in Tehran on Saturday, that Iran has no way out of its current crises other than détente. He added that "Iran should welcome direct talks with the United States and Saudi Arabia."

Borrowing the expression West Asia (rather than Middle East) from Supreme Leader Khamenei, Javadi-Hesar said: "We in West Asia are holding talks withEast Asia. What is wrong with also holding talks with the power West of Europe" meaning the United States.

Sitting at the negotiating table with the United States and Saudi Arabia will prove that problems are not as big as we assumed them to be, he said. If the current Iranian government which has not been able to solve the country's economic problems does this, they can at least take credit for melting the ice of a 40-year-long impasse in Iran's foreign relations, Javadi-Hesar added.

Meanwhile, former diplomat Ghasem Mohebali, criticized Iran's Looking East policy and said in an interview with Entekhab website that "Our economic problem is the result of our relations with Europe and the United States, not our relations with China and Saudi Arabia!" Mohebali, who was referring to Western sanctions, further stressed that Tehran should strive to solve its problems with Washington. He added: "Iran cannot have permanent normal ties with any country without solving its problems with the United States."

Nonetheless, Mohebali said that "the recent agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia gives us reasons to be optimistic about other positive developments as a result of returning to diplomacy.”

In another development, Iran's former Foreign Minister and Nuclear Chief Ali Akbar Salehi also welcomed the agreement between Riyadh and Tehran, and said in an interview with Entekhab: "The agreement with Saudi Arabia was a relatively timely event that can take us out of a deadlock." However, he noted that "this could have taken place earlier and without the intervention of mediators. In that case we would have owed nothing to no one." Salehi further hoped that both sides will remain committed to the agreement.

The agreement over the idea of resuming ties between Riyadh and Tehran has also led to other discussions on social media. Gholamreza Nouriala the editor of proreform Naghd-e Hal newspaper, harshly criticized the hardline editor of Kayhan newspaper who had called relations with Saudi Arabia "a stigma for the Islamic Iran" in 2016 after the attack on the Saudi embassy. However, in its Saturday edition, Kayhan's editor praised the resumption of ties as a “hard blow to the United States and Israel.” Nouriala called Shariatmadari a hypocrite and readers who commented on his tweet, angrily lashed out at Shariamadari.

Several other social media users posted pictures of Ali Foroughi who led the vigilante groups during the attack on Saudi diplomatic buildings in 2016 and was subsequently appointed as the manager of Channel 3 of Iran's state television which operates under Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. One user wrote that he got a big job for leading the arsonists and will once again get a bigger job for reflecting president Raisi's "big diplomatic victor."

Tens of other Twitter users also reminded that Majles Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf was also implicated for his role in the attack after one of the attack organizers, Hassan Kordmihan was revealed to be the chairman of his presidential election headquarters in 2017. On Friday, Ghalibaf praised the resumption of ties between Saudi Arabia and Iran as an important step to enhance the region's security.