ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – A top media advisor for Iran’s Supreme Leader said on Friday that US President Joe Biden has shown himself to be no different to former President Donald Trump when it comes to Iran, after the US conducted airstrikes against Tehran-backed militias on the Iraq-Syria border in response to rocket attacks on US and Coalition personnel in Iraq.
The comments from the Iranian hardliner came on the same day that Biden changed his tone with respect to Iran, adopting a firmer stance to caution Tehran to stop its destabilizing activities in the region after weeks of reconciliatory messages about the revival of the 2015 nuclear deal.
“It was said that Biden was different to former president Donald Trump and would respect the sovereignty of Iraq and Syria,” wrote the hardline newspaper Kayhan, whose editor-in-chief Hossein Shariatmadari is appointed by the office of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. “However this attack, which is seen as the first crime of Biden during his presidency, proved to everyone that he is no different to Trump and he is only different in tactics.”
Biden authorized the first strikes of his administration against Iran-backed militias on Thursday, US time, on the Syria-Iraq border “to protect American and coalition personnel and our security interests in the region."
The airstrikes were in response to attacks on US and Global Coalition against Daesh (Islamic State, ISIS) interests and, in particular, a rocket attack on an air base in Erbil housing US personnel a week earlier, which killed a contractor and wounded several others, including a US service member and Kurdish civilians.
Biden told reporters in Texas on Friday that his message to Iran was simple: “You can't act with impunity, be careful."
The message was echoed by his Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who described the US action as “focused, proportionate, but also effective in degrading some of the capacity that the militia in question had to perpetrate new attacks.”
“I think and expect that that message was clearly received,” Blinken said, referring to Tehran.
The spokesperson for Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Saeed Khatibzadeh, said on Friday that the airstrikes were a violation of Syrian sovereignty and would lead to further instability in the region.
The attack on Iran-backed militias is bound to make Tehran’s hardliners more rigid in blocking any reconciliation efforts with Washington over revival of the 2015 nuclear deal.
Biden and Blinken have sent positive signals to Iran on a number of occasions, indicating that Washington is ready to re-join the deal. Tehran, however, has said that for that to happen, Washington must immediately lift all sanctions imposed on Iran during Trump’s presidency.
On Friday, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) set a new deadline, saying that cameras belonging to the UN's nuclear watchdog agency installed at Iranian nuclear sites would be disabled in three months if the US does not lift sanctions.
Iraq, which has cordial relations with both Washington and Tehran, is set to lose the most if tensions between the two foes escalate further. Iraqi leaders are worried that a possible confrontation between Tehran and Washington would deepen instability in the country, still reeling from three years of devastating war with ISIS and an economy in tatters due to the COVID-19 pandemic and a drop in oil prices.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi is under immense pressure from Iran-backed Shiite parties and militias. The Iraqi Ministry of Defense distanced itself from the Thursday attack, saying it was not aware of the airstrikes and did not coordinate with Washington.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein arrived in Tehran on Saturday morning, on a surprise trip to meet with top security officials as well as Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and his Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. The US attack on Shiite militias on the Iraq-Syria border is top of the agenda, Rudaw understands.
