Middle East & Africa | Making trouble and making up

Iran bares its teeth, while its rivals mend fences

Saudi Arabia has brought Qatar back into the fold, as Iran stirs things up in the Gulf

|BEIRUT

THE THIRD day of January marked a year since America assassinated Qassem Suleimani, a talismanic Iranian general who marshalled militias across the Middle East. The mood was febrile. American officials feared commemorative reprisals. Muhammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, tweeted that “intelligence from Iraq” indicated an American “plot to FABRICATE pretext for war”. The USS Nimitz, an American aircraft-carrier, having been ordered home from the Persian Gulf days earlier as a conciliatory gesture to Iran, was told to stay put. In the end, January 3rd passed without incident. Yet the day that followed was anything but uneventful.

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On January 4th Iran said it had resumed enriching uranium to 20% purity, a level that is nine-tenths of the way to weapons-grade, at its underground Fordow facility. Under the terms of a nuclear deal signed by Iran and six world powers in 2015, but abrogated by America in 2018, Iran is forbidden to enrich anything at all at Fordow, let alone to such levels.

In response to President Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign of sanctions, Iran had already violated several parts of that deal over the past two years. Then, on November 27th, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Iran’s top nuclear scientist, was assassinated, probably by Israel. Iran’s parliament promptly passed a law requiring the government of Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s president, to produce and store at least 120kg of 20%-enriched uranium a year, among other steps. Mr Rouhani had tried to defer these moves, but eventually declared himself “bound” by the legislation.

The 120kg figure is no coincidence: it is half the amount thought necessary for a single bomb (if the uranium is enriched further). Yet Iran’s probable aim is not to make one—American intelligence agencies believe Iran largely closed a covert nuclear-weapons programme in 2003. Rather, it may be creating leverage in order to compel America to return to the nuclear deal. Mr Zarif emphasises that Iran’s violations of the deal are “fully reversible”.

Joe Biden, America’s president-elect, has promised to rejoin the agreement if Iran moves back into “strict compliance”. Iran is eager to hold Mr Biden to his word by demonstrating that it has a good hand to play if sanctions are not lifted. It has also hinted at more cards up its sleeve. On January 5th a spokesman for Iran’s atomic-energy organisation noted that Iran could enrich uranium to 60%, a level that would have no plausible civilian use but would shorten the path to a bomb.

Things could go awry before Mr Biden takes office on January 20th. Mr Trump has held Iran responsible for rocket attacks on Americans in Iraq, and has contemplated military strikes on Iran’s nuclear programme. As well as the lurking Nimitz, missile-packed American and Israeli submarines conspicuously surfaced in the Persian Gulf in December. “I’m very worried about it,” says Mark Fitzpatrick, a former State Department official now at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a think-tank in London. “[Mr Trump] is capable of trying anything.”

If that were not enough, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) chose the same day, January 4th, to seize a South Korean oil tanker, ostensibly for “polluting the Persian Gulf with chemicals”. The IRGC is not known for its environmental activism. Tasnim, an IRGC-linked news agency, was more candid. “Seizing the ship”, it said, “is a good pretext for releasing Iran’s blocked money in South Korea, which is about $8bn.” The previous day, the Tehran Times, an Iranian newspaper, had suggested that Iran wanted to use those funds—frozen in response to American sanctions—to buy supplies of covid-19 vaccine. South Korea has sent a destroyer to the region, but says it does not plan to use force. Negotiations are under way between South Korea and Iran.

As Iran was picking these fights, its rivals were smoothing over theirs at a Gulf Co-operation Council summit in the Saudi city of al-Ula (pictured on previous page). Upon landing in Saudi Arabia, the emir of Qatar was embraced by Muhammad bin Salman, the kingdom’s crown prince and de facto ruler. Their hug would have been unthinkable a year ago. In 2017 Saudi Arabia and three other Arab states—Bahrain, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates—imposed an embargo on Qatar, closing their borders and airspace and in effect turning the peninsular nation into an island.

To end the blockade, they insisted, Qatar would have to accede to 13 demands, among them cutting ties with both Iran and political Islamists and closing Al Jazeera, its influential satellite-news channel. The demands were unrealistic by design; Qatar agreed to none of them. Still, the four countries have agreed to restore full diplomatic relations with Qatar, a big step towards ending the dispute. Saudi Arabia has already reopened its borders with the emirate. The Qataris will probably reciprocate by toning down their rhetoric on Al Jazeera and in other media outlets.

Jared Kushner, Mr Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, had spent months pushing for a deal. But the resolution may have less to do with his efforts than with Mr Trump’s defeat in November. The Saudis are wary of Mr Biden and his fellow Democrats, who are angry about the kingdom’s ruinous war in Yemen and its murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist, in 2018. The Saudis, in turn, are worried about Mr Biden’s talk of re-entering the nuclear deal with Iran, their main regional rival. Ending the blockade of Qatar buys the Saudis some political capital in Washington—which they will probably be quick to spend.

This article appeared in the Middle East & Africa section of the print edition under the headline "The Arabs get back in line"

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