Iranian Lawmaker Suggests Closing Taliban Embassy Over Water Dispute
Amid tensions with Afghanistan over water, an Iranian lawmaker has suggested “non-diplomatic ways” to exert pressure on the Taliban, such as closing its Tehran embassy.
Amid tensions with Afghanistan over water, an Iranian lawmaker has suggested “non-diplomatic ways” to exert pressure on the Taliban, such as closing its Tehran embassy.
Fada-Hossein Maleki, a member of the Iranian Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, said Sunday that a taskforce within the Supreme National Security Council is mulling over new measures to secure Iran’s share of water from Hirmand river, including closing the Taliban embassy and reducing political, commercial, and economic interactions through various means.
“We have many tools at our disposal that we can utilize for these purposes,” he noted.
Calling for stricter measures, Maleki said that considering the current position that the Taliban holds, Iran should not excessively appease them. “We have given them whatever they wanted, even compromising the relations between our Persian and Pashto speaking friends, who say demands by the Taliban are being accommodated one after another by Iran,” he said.
“We are witnessing a distressing situation in the Sistan and Baluchestan region, where villages are gradually becoming deserted,” he stressed, adding that the people of the province are facing imminent dangers and the first concrete step to address their grievances is to solve the water issue.
Flowing 700 miles, Hirmand -- which is called Helmand on the Afghan side -- enters Iran's Hamoun wetlands in the Sistan-Baluchestan province after originating in the Hindu Kush Mountains near Kabul. Lake Hamoun used to be one of the world's largest wetlands, straddling 4,000 square kilometers between Iran and Afghanistan.
The river, which both Afghanistan and Iran depend on for agriculture and drinking water, has been the biggest source of tension for years.
Iran has accused Afghanistan of restricting the flow of water from the river by building dams over it, a charge that Afghan authorities deny.
This comes as in the past few weeks, numerous reports have been published about water shortages in different regions of Iran, especially the Sistan and Baluchestan province.
Salehi told Etemad newspaper that bilateral relations with the United States were fraught with negativity from the very beginning of the Islamic revolution and has remained so for 44 years. The two countries have negotiated on several issues in the past, such as prisoner exchanges, Afghanistan, and the nuclear issue, but they have never held comprehensive talks to resolve underlying differences.
“Now, considering all regional and international conditions, it is good and appropriate opportunity to hold multi-faceted political talks with the West, including Europe and the United States,” Salehi was quoted as saying.
It is said that Salehi was the Iranian negotiator who first launched talks with the Obama administration in 2013 in Oman to agree to start talks over Iran’s nuclear program. The process led to the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, JCPOA, or the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
Salehi was foreign minister from 2010-2013 and he also headed the Atomic Energy Organization (AEOI) of Iran before and after his tenure as chief diplomat.
As head of AEOI, he was involved in the JCPOA talks, but the chief negotiator was then-foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.
Salehi said that Iran had grievances against the United States during and after the revolution and it always expected an apology from Washington for alleged interference in its domestic politics in 1953, However, Salehi argued that when Secretary of State Madeline Albright once acknowledged US mistakes, Iran should have accepted it as an apology and smoothed out relations with Washington.
The former chief diplomat also had a message for hardliners currently dominating the government in Iran. “Some people mistakenly believe that being revolutionary gives them the freedom to act without bounds. However, the truth is quite the opposite. Being revolutionary demands the utmost thinking, rationality, and knowledge. A true revolutionary must be well-versed in political knowledge.”
Iranians should also consider the fact, that at the end of World War Two, it was the United States that forced the Soviet Union to withdraw from vast swaths of Iran’s territory, which Moscow could have easily colonized, Salehi pointed out. Americans and Europeans also did not understand the Iranian revolution in the late 1970s and were caught off guard, the former foreign minister argued. Many believed at the time that this was not a clergy-led revolution and suspected that the Soviet Union or China were behind it.
In short, as an Iranian regime insider, Salehi tried to present a more balanced view of the United States and urge comprehensive talks, that US presidents have on numerous occasions urged the Islamic Republic to agree to. However, Iran’s ruler Ali Khamenei who has been at the helm of power since 1989, has opposed wide-ranging talks, especially after 2018, when the former US administration withdrew from the JCPOA and imposed sanctions.
The Iranian regime wants to maintain is freedom of action in the Middle East, where it has built an arc of proxy forces from Yemen to Iraq and Lebanon. The regime has also isolated the country from the international economy, maintaining an overwhelming system of government ownership of major companies, banks and media.
Salehi, viewed as one of the more balanced and polished Islamic Republic officials, has occasionally spoken out in the past two years urging better governance, democracy, and a stronger economy.
Last November, current foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian invited his predecessors, including Salehi for a “friendly meeting and discussion” that local media called as urgent in nature. This was during fierce anti-regime protests and after talks to revive the JCPOA reached a deadlock.
Jannati was reinstated as the Secretary of the Islamic Republic of Iran's Guardian Council on July 19, giving rise to questions about his ability to continue his career for yet another year after 31 years of holding the same office.
The Guardian Council is in charge of endorsing parliamentary legislation after ascertaining compliance with the Sharia [religious law]. The body also vets the candidates of parliamentary and presidential elections to make sure about their adherence to the rules of Islam and the articles of the Iranian constitution.
In fact, the Council has increasingly adopted just one criterion to judge the eligibility of candidates – complete obedience to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Jannati, a Khamenei confidant, is well known in Iran for having more than a dozen posts including the Chairman of the Assembly of Experts, a body that determines the country's next leader after Khamenei's death.
According to Rouydad24, a relatively moderate news website in Tehran, Jannati, 97, is best known for his staunch opposition to the idea of reforms in Iran. He told Al-Ahram, Egypt's leading newspaper in 2000 that "reformism is an idea advocated by the British Empire, the United States and Israel."
The website added that many in Iran criticize Jannati's reinstatement, and believe that he should have been retired many years ago. However, conservatives in Iran know that his authority goes beyond his position as the Guardian Council Secretary.
Jannati is one of the most loyal Iranian politicians to Khamenei. Iranian reformists have said at times that he makes the 12-member Council's decision single-handedly and the clerics and lawyers at the council, are fronts for Jannati, who is himself a front for Khamenei who does not want to accept responsibility for disqualifying election candidates he does not like.
Although traditionally presidential candidates seek Khamenei's approval in private meetings, yet former presidents Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were both disqualified by Jannati and his Guardian Council in 2009 and 2017 respectively. Jannati usually does not even bother to present a valid reason as to why his council bars a tested regime insider from running in an election. The two former presidents had committed no crimes according to Islamic Republics courts but were simply disliked by Khamenei.
Jannati who was several years older than Rafsanjani, disqualified him for being "too old," and barred Ahmadinejad from running arguing that he might be good for other posts, but certainly not for the President's office.
There are numerous jokes about Jannati and his old age, including the one that says he solemnized the marriage of Adam and Eve, and another one about God Almighty himself saying that when he created the world Jannati was already there! Jannati retold these jokes and several others on live TV a few years ago laughing loud. In fact, he is probably the only Iranian official who tolerates and even enjoys jokes about himself.
He was born in 1926 in a small town near Esfahan as the only son and only child in his family. He entered the Qom Seminary quite late when he was 19. Before the 1979 revolution he was jailed three times (altogether for three months) and was exiled for another 3 years. One of his sons, Hussain, was executed for reportedly being a member of Mojahedin-e Khalq opposition group. Another one of his four sons, Ali, was culture minister under President Hassan Rouhani, but was removed from his post after reportedly being involved in a scandal.
Apart from his post at the Assembly of Experts, he has never exposed himself to people's vote. And he owes his election to reformist former President Mohammad Khatami who put him and a couple of other hardliners on the reformists' election list based on a political deal.
In 2005 and 2009 he supported Ahmadinejad's presidency and told voters that he believed he was Khamenei's choice. This was years before Khamenei revealed during a sermon that his ideas were close to those of populist Ahmadinejad.
Jannati once made a fantastic claim that Iran's reformists received a one-billion-dollar assistance from the United States. When reformists asked him to present his evidence, he said he will submit it to the court, which he never did.
Some Iran watchers have said that Khamenei's interest in Jannati is because the Iranian leader wants the old man to endorse his son Mojtaba as the next ruler after his death. However, whether Jannati can outlive Khamenei is debatable. Jannati is 15 years older.
