Expanding influence in the region: Iran’s unusual political journey

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi continues his extensive regional visit, amid preparations for an Israeli attack on Iran. Esmail Baka’i, spokesman for Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, announced this morning (Monday) that Arakchi will take off today for additional regional visits – this time to Bahrain and Kuwait.As part of the round of visits of the last few weeks, the new foreign minister also made unusual visits to Egypt and Jordan, two countries that have a peace agreement with Israel and whose relations with Iran over the past few years have been quite shaky. The visits to Amman and Cairo were the first visits by an Iranian foreign minister to them in the entire last decade. Today’s expected visit to Bahrain, a country that is a member of the Abraham Accords and has diplomatic relations with Israel, is also particularly unusual – and will be the first of an Iranian foreign minister in the kingdom since 2007.

Iranian Foreign Minister Araqchi’s regional tour began on October 4 with a visit to Beirut, about a week after Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah was killed. According to various reports, Araqchi was supposed to visit Beirut about two weeks earlier, but on the advice of Nasrallah himself, he He postponed his visit in the days after the attacks on the pagers and walkie-talkies that were blown up by Hezbollah terrorists.

 

Since the visit to Lebanon, Araqchi has also visited Syria, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq, Oman, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, and today he is expected to arrive in Bahrain and then Kuwait. In general, the policy of extensive regional campaigns in many of the Middle Eastern countries was also known from Araqchi’s predecessor, Hossein-Amir Abdullahian, who was killed in the crash of President Ibrahim Raisi’s helicopter in May. Despite this, the scope of the political journey in a period of less than three weeks is certainly unusual.

The extensive sequence of visits comes, of course, against the backdrop of preparations in Iran for an Israeli military attack – in response to Iran’s missile attack on October 1. According to a Reuters report, during Araqchi’s visit to Saudi Arabia and Qatar on October 9 and 10, he threatened them and other countries in the Gulf that Iran would harm any country that helps Israel in its attack against Iran. In those days, Iran also threatened to damage the oil installations of its neighbors in the Gulf – if Israel damaged its own oil installations.

The Iranian official’s visit to Jordan was unusual compared to all other visits, and comes at the peak of covert tensions between Tehran and Amman. Throughout the recent period, there has been an uproar in Jordan against the background of the increase in Iranian attempts to influence the country, while supporting Palestinian and other elements that are very hostile to the fragile Hashemite royal house. According to many reports and testimonies, in recent months Iran has greatly increased its efforts to transfer weapons and means of warfare through Jordan to the terrorist organizations in the West Bank, while substantially harming Jordan’s security. In addition, Jordan reluctantly became the site for the interception of many of the ballistic missiles launched by Iran at Israel.

An extensive political settlement is taking shape in the Middle East, but not the kind imagined by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who continues to say that his government can promote a settlement with Riyadh, the New York Times wrote yesterday. Along with the series of visits to the capitals of the region, Iranian Foreign Minister Arakchi participated for the first time this month in a summit with the foreign ministers of the Gulf countries. Although it seemed that Israel was very close to a historic agreement with Saudi Arabia – today it is evident that Riyadh is much closer to Tehran than to Jerusalem.

Alongside Iran’s overt and covert diplomatic goals in the diplomatic visits of the Foreign Minister and his entourage, it is likely that they were also intended to strengthen and maintain Iran’s relationship with its affiliate terrorist organizations in the Middle East. Along with the visit to Lebanon, which apparently was to some extent involved in assisting Hezbollah in the difficult days after Nasrallah’s assassination and the resignation of its senior leadership – Araqchi met during his visit to Oman on October 15 with Muhammad Abdel Salam, the spokesman for the Houthis and their most senior political representative. In addition, as part of his visit to Turkey on Saturday, Araqchi met with senior Hamas officials abroad, including Sinwar’s deputy Khalil al-Hiya and the head of the Shura Council of Hamas, Muhammad Ismail Darwish