As the US doubles down on its “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran, India and Europe can cooperate to stem the tide against the surge of Iranian hardliners.
In March, Iran became the first major COVID-19 hotspot outside Asia and until April, remained as one of the worst affected. In all, Iran’s fight with COVID-19 has been costly, with over 100,000 cases and a death toll of over 6,500. Iran’s Health Ministry has even warned of a resurgence of COVID-19 cases, despite a flattened curve after two months of containment efforts.
Despite the severity of the situation, the Donald Trump administration has doubled down on its “maximum pressure” campaign by announcing new sanctions on Iran.
The American calculation seems to have been aimed at one of two possible outcomes. Either the two-front challenge of a domestic health crisis and tighter sanctions coaxes Tehran to return to the negotiating table for a new nuclear deal. Alternatively, the incumbent regime capitulates under heightened domestic protests over its incapability to handle the ongoing emergency. However, this policy is turning out to bear counterintuitive results.
Contrary to intended US outcomes, the situation seems to be devolving with the consolidation of Iranian hardliners. The pro-reform, moderate and/or non-ideological technocratic faction of the Iranian political spectrum is under duress — in stark contrast to their popularity following the 2015 finalisation of the Iran Nuclear Deal. Trump’s withdrawal from the same and his subsequent “maximum pressure” campaign has hastened the downturn of the moderates’ fortunes — all whilst validating the hardliners’ mistrust over the US’s dependability.
Amidst the coronavirus pandemic, calls for consolidating “insular rule internally and hard power abroad” against “hostile foreign forces” are increasing. According to a poll, moderate President Hassan Rouhani is now less popular than his 2017 election opponent and conservative Ebrahim Raisi — who was recently elevated by Iran’s Supreme Leader to the position of judiciary chief.
The current crisis has also presented the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) with an opportunity to engage in a public relations campaign following its heavy-handed response to the November 2019 protests and their January 2020 shooting of a Ukrainian civilian aircraft. Reportedly, the IRGC has now been projecting “itself as the guardian of public health and the champion of the fight against the invisible enemy.”
Even moderate Foreign Minister Javad Zarif’s call for unity and continued global engagement was discounted in the Supreme Leader’s address on the Iranian New Year. In the speech, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei defended Iran’s “model of religious governance, rejected US assistance, and suggested that the United States could be behind the COVID-19 outbreak.”
Iranian hardliners’ rising influence is set to hasten Tehran’s pivot away from its initial strategy against “maximum pressure” — to remain compliant with the nuclear deal and gather political support from the international community. Already, this shift in Iranian foreign policy has led to a string of attacks — on oil tankers in the Persian Gulf and even Saudi oil refineries. Iran’s missile barrage on the US’s Al Asad military base in Iraq also demonstrated that it “could land missiles with extreme precision, circumventing US-manufactured air defence systems.” Tehran has also reduced its compliance to the nuclear deal by tripling its stockpile of enriched uranium.
These retaliatory escalations raise the prospect of miscalculations with US forces, and as a result threaten the interests of other powers. India and the European Union for instance, have announced their congruent support for the Iran Nuclear Deal and its pursuit of a nuclear-free Iran under a “non-proliferation framework” that seeks “international peace, stability and security.”
If the situation however devolves into a US-Iran conflict, the EU’s plans for pan-Eurasian connectivity under the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) would be upended. Also, another wave of north-bound refugees could exacerbate Europe’s challenge with anti-immigrant populist movements posing an existential threat to the EU experiment. For India, its strategic investment in Iran’s Chabahar Port and its International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) connectivity project would be at risk. Moreover, a US-Iran conflict can reverse US-India partnership’s gains on isolating Pakistan over its support for transnational terror networks. Much like in the case of the US war in Afghanistan, an American military effort in Iran would once again increase US operational dependence on neighbouring Pakistan — to effectively degrade the solidifying bipartisan consensus in Washington against Islamabad’s duplicity on counterterrorism efforts.
Hence, powers like Europe and India — that have been advocates for a peaceful pathway to a nuclear-free Iran, hold an imperative to balance the fallout from heightened US antagonism. And the coronavirus pandemic, offers an apt opportunity to do so by strengthening the Iranian moderates’ call for continued Iranian global engagement over reactionary belligerence.
Although humanitarian items like medicines and pharmaceutical equipment do not fall under the purview of US sanctions, nations have been reluctant to do business with Iran.
This stems from nations’ experience with the Trump administration threatening coercion to seek compliance on its “maximum pressure” campaign. For instance, after the US withdrew from the Iran Nuclear Deal, transatlantic relations worsened as European powers refused to follow suit. However they caved on trade as multinational companies (like France's Total, Germany’s Siemens and Denmark’s Maersk) refused to do business with Iran out of fear of US sanctions. Similarly, India ceased import of Iranian oil in face of US secondary sanctions, despite having favourable arrangements like 60-day creditline, free insurance, and cheaper shipping.
However, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, European nations have employed the INSTEX — a French-registered trade mechanism developed to circumvent US-led payment channels, launched in 2019 against Trump’s policy of economic coercion. In March, Germany announced the first successful transaction with Iran under INSTEX. Subsequently, Germany, France and the UK used the system to send medical supplies worth Euro 5 million to Iran. This move was even met with equanimity from the US president: “Medical good?... that doesn’t bother me.” This presents a window of opportunity for India to engage with Iran — without incurring US coercion that may have held it back thus far.
Since lifting its ban on exporting Hydroxycholoroquine — an antimalarial drug with “anecdotal” evidence of being effective against the novel coronavirus, India has exported the same and other common drugs to about 24 countries and donated supplies to another 31 countries under its “medical diplomacy” initiative. As of mid-April, requests from Iran on such supplies however, were reportedly on hold following a call between Zarif and his Indian counterpart on “illegal and unilateral US sanctions.” If India and its European partners now together heed to Iranian requests, they could also contribute in arresting Iranian hardliners’ recent surge.
Without such a timely gesture of apolitical international cooperation in face of a pandemic, the current spate of crises compounded by US pressures will definitely alter the Iranian moderates’ fortunes in the upcoming 2021 presidential elections. Time is of the essence, as one would recall: after the George W. Bush administration’s ‘Axis of Evil’ antagonism followed moderate Iranian President Mohammad Khatami’s 1998 call to break the “wall of mistrust” between Iran and the US, conservative hardliner and firebrand politician Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rose to power and impeded Iranian engagement for the entirety of his eight-year rule.
Hence, India and Europe’s medical diplomacy can be pivotal in strengthening Iranian moderates’ call for continued global engagement even in times of greater antagonism by the US.
Abhimanini Sawhney is a research intern at ORF Mumbai.
The views expressed above belong to the author(s). ORF research and analyses now available on Telegram! Click here to access our curated content — blogs, longforms and interviews.
Kashish Parpiani was Fellow at ORFs Mumbai centre. His interests include US-India bilateral ties US grand strategy and US foreign policy in the Indo-Pacific.
Read More +
PREV
