Iran plans to attack Saudi Arabia, Iraq? Analysis by Mikhail Shereshevskiy

On November 1, Saudi Arabia warned the United States of an impending Iranian attack. We are talking about the fact that Tehran can attack targets located on the territory of the kingdom and, at the same time, attack Erbil (the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan), Wall Street Journal reported on November 1. It also stressed that the US military in the Middle East had increased the level of combat readiness.

The US National Security Council, the body coordinating the work of all law enforcement agencies, said: "We are concerned about the threat picture, and we remain in constant contact through military and intelligence channels with the Saudis. We will not hesitate to act in defence of our interests and partners in the region."

At night, the State Department confirmed the Wall Street Journal report. Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ned Price said Washington is excited about the "picture of threats" emanating from the Islamic Republic of Iran. Meanwhile, in Iran, a red banner of retribution has been raised over the dome of the Jamkaran Mosque. This means blood feud and declaration of war. The red flag was last raised over the mosque in 2020 when Qasem Soleymani was killed.

Why does Iran need this?

Since mid-September, an uprising has been raging in the country, in which almost all social classes and ethnic groups take part. Although the movement has so far failed to mobilise millions of protesters to organise a general strike at factories and a generally armed demonstration, it has covered most large and many medium and small cities in Iran. Residents of Qom and Tehran, Kurds and Baluchis, Azerbaijanis and Arabs, students of the capital's universities and workers of some factories, bazaar traders and shopkeepers periodically participate in strikes and street demonstrations. Despite the growing violence of the authorities (over 200 people have already been killed), the regime has so far failed to suppress this movement. Moreover, the situation is escalating, in some regions, local residents took up arms and began to destroy officials and security forces.

A few weeks ago, the Iranian IRGC (the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps - the second special army, which selects the most religious military) launched a series of strikes against Kurdish militias in eastern Iraq shortly after the start of the protests, claiming that these militias allegedly sow unrest in Iran. It is obvious that the Iranian leadership wants to move the conflict outside, distracting the attention of the population from internal problems. This possibility has long been discussed by military and political analysts studying the Iranian regime. The new threats against the Saudis and Iraqi Kurds are a continuation of the same line.

Changing Iran's global role

Israeli political analyst Seth Frantzman on the pages of The Jerusalem Post pointed out that the Iranian-Russian arms trade will change the global role of Iran and ideas about the policy of this state.

After Iran provided Russia with drones and may be ready to send even more weapons to Moscow to help it in the conflict with Ukraine, this has become a problem whose scale goes far beyond the Middle East.

In the recent past, Western European countries and many representatives of the American political class viewed Iran as a more or less pragmatic regime interested in large-scale economic cooperation with the European Union. Iran sold oil to Europe and East Asia and spoke of its interest in receiving international investments and technologies. In 2015, a nuclear deal was concluded, which was based on Iran's refusal to produce nuclear weapons (more precisely, nuclear stuffing for missile warheads) in exchange for the lifting of US economic sanctions against it. The heads of various departments of the country at that time cheerfully estimated that Iran would need at least $500 billion of investment to modernise the economy using backward technologies.

Obviously, this approach assumed a cautious Iranian foreign policy. At that time, Europe believed that Iran was ready to follow a pragmatic course and behave carefully outside the Middle East. As for the Iranian military presence - actually expansion - in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, the Europeans had little reason to worry here. After all, the Iranians, supporting forces loyal to Tehran there, simultaneously cleaned up Sunni jihadists - the very people who staged terrorist attacks and sabotage on the streets of European cities. And the Iranians themselves have not done anything like this in Europe in the last decade.

Everything has changed literally in recent weeks amid the Iranian weapons supply to the Russians. Previously, although Moscow and Tehran had worked together for decades, it was usually Iran that needed know-how and weapons, so it relied on Russia as a senior partner in these relations. However, the supply of Iranian weapons to Russia, which can affect the situation in Ukraine, dramatically changes things. The European countries of NATO and the United States have firmly taken Ukraine's side and are working to ensure its success. The actual transition of Iran to Russia's side in this conflict raises the level of confrontation and shifts all the accents.

Nuclear deal's fate

Over the past year and a half, negotiations have been held between the Iranians on the one hand and the Europeans and Americans on the other on the issue of resuming the nuclear deal. Former US President Donald Trump withdrew from it unilaterally and imposed new sanctions against Iran, which hit all sectors of the economy. Joe Biden's administration, by contrast, intended to renew the nuclear deal. But perhaps in recent years, or even in recent months, irreversible changes have taken place in Iran's policy, ultimately caused by Trump's decision. Sanctions have become one of the causes of the deepest economic crisis in the country. This crisis is the main reason for the current protests.

On the other hand, it became clear to the Tehran regime that no long-term agreements with the United States are possible. After all, Republicans have already promised that if they win the next presidential election, they will cancel the nuclear deal if Biden renegotiates it. It turns out that the benefits of a potential deal will not be great: Iran will only be given the opportunity to trade oil for about two years, increasing its exports to about 2-3 million barrels per day (now about 1 million). This would help improve things in the economy somewhat, but it would not radically change the situation in it - there can be no question of long-term investments in Iran in such conditions (who will invest hundreds of billions of dollars in the economy, which tomorrow may again fall under sanctions). Therefore, Iran's interest in resuming the nuclear deal has plummeted.

As a result, the Iranian regime apparently realised that it is on the edge of the abyss: it is impossible to overcome the economic crisis under sanctions; the long-term lifting of sanctions and the arrival of large international investments in the country is an impossible dream; the economic crisis causes uprisings in the country, the nuclear deal is not able to fix the situation radically.

It seems very likely that the Iranians decided to radicalise their foreign policy in response. The obvious disappointment in the possibility of cooperating with the West led them to further rapprochement with Russia, including the supply of modern weapons to it. As Seth Frantzman points out: "In this scenario, the West will permanently alter its view of Tehran – because an Iran that is complicit in Russia's war in Ukraine is an Iran that cannot be trusted with any kind of deal, especially a nuclear one."

On the other hand, Tehran clearly wants to escalate external conflicts in order to shift the attention of the Iranian society itself from internal disputes to external confrontation.

It is one thing for pragmatic Iran, an oil supplier to Europe, to limit its external expansion to a few Middle Eastern countries with a Shiite population. Iran, an ally of Russia, is a completely different matter, helping its troops in Ukraine and attacking at the same time the closest ally of the United States in the Middle East - Saudi Arabia. Altogether, it will lead to an increase in Tehran's escalation with the collective West.