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As the United States and other world powers rushed to complete the framework for a nuclear agreement with Iran last April, a naval confrontation loomed in the Gulf of Aden.
Iran had sent a flotilla of nine cargo ships toward Yemen, where Saudi Arabia had recently imposed a naval blockade as part of its efforts to beat back a military campaign by Houthi rebels that had forced Yemen's president to flee the country. The Iranian ships' cargo was unknown, but their approach to Yemen was a direct challenge to the Saudi blockade.
"I was on the phone in an instant to my counterpart, and made it very, very clear that this could be a major confrontation, that we were not going to tolerate it," Secretary of State John Kerry told the Council on Foreign Relations last month. "And he called me back, indeed, within a short span of time and said, 'They will not land, they are not going to unload anything, they are not going to go out of international waters.' "
Just to be sure, the U.S. sent an aircraft carrier, the USS Roosevelt, to the area.
A month later, Iran again diverted a freighter that had been bound for a Houthi-held port after the U.S. publicly warned against breaking the Saudi blockade.
A leading Iranian foreign affairs analyst cites the Iranian diversions of its ships as recent evidence that 36 years after the Islamic revolution brought the ayatollahs to power, Iran has become a nation more interested in preserving stability and the status quo than in driving revolutionary upheaval.
"How can this not be a status quo power?" said Kayhan Barzegar, the chairman of the Institute of Middle East Strategic Studies in Tehran. "You see the pragmatism."
As the U.S. Congress debates the nuclear deal with Iran, with a vote expected by Sept. 20, one issue remains at the forefront of the discussion: Can Iran become an accepted member of the world community or will it be an outlier, bent on disrupting the international order? A related question also remains: Will the financial benefits from sanctions relief, assuming the accord is fully implemented, go to support far-flung military causes or will it facilitate Iran's return to international life?
A week of interviews with experts and government officials in Iran reveals a complex answer. World recognition of Iran as a serious negotiating partner will weaken Iranian hardliners who thrive on having the U.S. as an enemy, chiefly by reducing fears of a U.S. plot to overthrow the Islamic regime. Yet Iran's most controversial foreign engagements are grounded in the principles of the 1979 revolution and aren't about to go away.
Read more at ...
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/irans-role-in-the-world-is-question-posed-by-pending-iran-deal/ar-BBlzXCL
Iran had sent a flotilla of nine cargo ships toward Yemen, where Saudi Arabia had recently imposed a naval blockade as part of its efforts to beat back a military campaign by Houthi rebels that had forced Yemen's president to flee the country. The Iranian ships' cargo was unknown, but their approach to Yemen was a direct challenge to the Saudi blockade.
"I was on the phone in an instant to my counterpart, and made it very, very clear that this could be a major confrontation, that we were not going to tolerate it," Secretary of State John Kerry told the Council on Foreign Relations last month. "And he called me back, indeed, within a short span of time and said, 'They will not land, they are not going to unload anything, they are not going to go out of international waters.' "
Just to be sure, the U.S. sent an aircraft carrier, the USS Roosevelt, to the area.
A month later, Iran again diverted a freighter that had been bound for a Houthi-held port after the U.S. publicly warned against breaking the Saudi blockade.
A leading Iranian foreign affairs analyst cites the Iranian diversions of its ships as recent evidence that 36 years after the Islamic revolution brought the ayatollahs to power, Iran has become a nation more interested in preserving stability and the status quo than in driving revolutionary upheaval.
"How can this not be a status quo power?" said Kayhan Barzegar, the chairman of the Institute of Middle East Strategic Studies in Tehran. "You see the pragmatism."
As the U.S. Congress debates the nuclear deal with Iran, with a vote expected by Sept. 20, one issue remains at the forefront of the discussion: Can Iran become an accepted member of the world community or will it be an outlier, bent on disrupting the international order? A related question also remains: Will the financial benefits from sanctions relief, assuming the accord is fully implemented, go to support far-flung military causes or will it facilitate Iran's return to international life?
A week of interviews with experts and government officials in Iran reveals a complex answer. World recognition of Iran as a serious negotiating partner will weaken Iranian hardliners who thrive on having the U.S. as an enemy, chiefly by reducing fears of a U.S. plot to overthrow the Islamic regime. Yet Iran's most controversial foreign engagements are grounded in the principles of the 1979 revolution and aren't about to go away.
Read more at ...
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/irans-role-in-the-world-is-question-posed-by-pending-iran-deal/ar-BBlzXCL
Iran
Middle East
International Affairs
Edited >1 y ago
Posted >1 y ago
Responses: 7
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Watch "Team America, World Police". Iran's role is the same as N. Korea's. Great movie to summarize international relations. I'm not giving it away...you have to watch it.
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Obama can't wait to give them nukes. These guys could shoot down our planes and we would still give them the OK to fire up their bomb making plant.
As for their role in the world. I am pretty sure I would consider them the taint.
As for their role in the world. I am pretty sure I would consider them the taint.
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