Raisi enters office with bang as Israel tries rallying world against Iran

The change of president in Iran shouldn’t make much difference to Israel. Whether Hassan Rouhani, who has been president since 2013, or Ebrahim Raisi, who will take office on Thursday, they don’t really make the decisions that matter to Israel.

When it comes to the things that are important to Israel – Iran’s nuclear program, its development of other advanced weapons, its proxies in the Middle East, and more – Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is in charge. “Hardliners” or “reformers”, as many commentators call the various sides of the narrow political field that Khamenei permits, no president really has a say in the Supreme Leader’s calls for genocide against Israel and steps to be taken to bomb.

However, with the Iranian attack on an Israel-managed ship near Oman on Friday that killed the ship’s Romanian captain and a British crew member, Raisi is – literally – stepping into office with a bang, and Israel is setting up his full diplomatic weight, and more. In answer.

In addition, Khamenei is using Raisi’s presidency as a reason to postpone negotiations with the United States on a re-entry into the 2015 nuclear deal, and perhaps even to withdraw it entirely.

Raisi, known as the “Butcher of Tehran,” is the former Iranian chief judge responsible for thousands of executions in 1988 and the violent crackdown on demonstrations in 2009. As a result, the US sanctioned him for human rights violations in 2019 and Sweden has a war crimes trial pending against him. Raisi was elected president in a vote in which Khamenei circumcised and approved the candidates and in which the turnout was below 50%.

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A senior Israeli official pointed his finger at Raisi immediately after the bombing of Mercer Street by UAV: ​​“The Iranian attack took place days before the swearing-in of the new President Raisi, a confidante of the Iranian Supreme Leader responsible for mass executions Dissidents. The masks are falling off and nobody can pretend they don’t know the nature of the Iranian regime. “

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid publicly said Iran was behind the attack, and Bennett said Israel had the intelligence to prove it.

Bennett said he expected the world to end Iranian aggression, but that Israel knew “how to send a message to Iran our way,” suggesting covert Israeli actions against the Islamic Republic.

Israel regards Iran’s killing of British and European citizens as a costly mistake by the regime that could turn other countries on Israel’s side, at least when it comes to responding to this particular incident.

Lapid pulled out all the stops and told his colleagues in the US, UK and Romania that Israel has assessed the attack as coming from Iran. Ambassadors in London, Washington and New York have already started telling relevant leaders in capitals and the UN that Iran is threatening international trade with its repeated attacks on ships.

Israel has also started pushing for the UN Security Council to condemn the Iranian attack. The UN Security Council, like the rest of the UN, is not a very friendly forum for Israel, and while it is possible that such a resolution could come about, its chances are not great. Still, Raisi could begin his tenure with a drama in Turtle Bay that would force Iranian UN ambassador Majid Takht-Ravanchi to fend off international pressure.

Even before this weekend, Raisi’s upcoming presidency had an impact on the nuclear talks.

He has long been skeptical of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and the world powers that the United States left in 2018 and to which they now want to return. Raisi was Khamenei’s favorite candidate, which already tells us a lot about how the Supreme Leader sees the deal.

The incoming Iranian president softened his one-time total opposition to the JCPOA before the election, but demanded far greater concessions from the US, including a guarantee that future US administrations will not leave the agreement. This is something the US cannot legally offer to Iran.

In July, almost a month after Raisi was elected president and a month after the end of the sixth round of indirect negotiations between the US and Iran to return to the JCPOA, his reservations about the deal were put into effect by Iran. Tehran’s chief negotiator for nuclear weapons and Deputy Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi announced that he would continue the one-month break in talks until Raisi took office. Abbas Araghchi said cynically that the break would enable a “democratic transfer of power”.

In recent weeks, Israel has alerted its allies in the JCPOA process – the US, UK, France and Germany – that Iran is using its time off the negotiating table to bring its nuclear program dangerously close to producing weapons-grade uranium.

Diplomatic sources have said Iran could use the “state of limbo” to cut its weapon breakout time from about seven to two or three months while the International Atomic Energy Agency is in an “uncomfortable position,” according to Director General Rafael Grossi called it not being able to properly review the situation.

And what we do know is not reassuring: Iran informed the IAEA in July that it had taken steps to produce uranium metal enriched to 20% for use as reactor fuel, bringing it to a more advanced state than any other country without nuclear weapons.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the JCPOA negotiations “cannot go on indefinitely,” and a return to the deal would be impossible if Iran’s nuclear advances continued. But Israel urges the US to draw a clear line on when it will be ready to return to talks.

In the meantime, it looks like Iran is prone to running out of US patience. Last week, Khamenei Raisi publicly advised learning from Rouhani, during whose tenure it “became clear that trusting the West would not help … Governments should definitely avoid tying their plans to negotiate with the West because they do.” will surely fail “. The Americans had taken a “stubborn stance” in recent talks, added the Supreme Leader.

Israel continues to oppose the JCPOA, as it did during Benjamin Netanyahu’s time as Prime Minister, citing that restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program – which it is currently violating – will expire in 2030 and that the deal does not like Iran’s malicious behavior Proxy engages in warfare and sponsorship of terrorist groups across the region or their ballistic missile program.

Unlike Netanyahu, the “change government” has chosen to work with the US to mitigate the damage of the deal while Washington insists on trying to return.

However, if Khamenei and Raisi get their way and finally kill the JCPOA, US-Israel talks over Iran will have to shift from “longer and stronger” design of the Iran deal to more dramatic avenues to attempt to destroy the nuclear weapons Islamic Republic stop program.