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An Island of stability in a sea of change: Iran's view of the Abraham Accords
Abstract
In February 2019, upon the 40th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, Iran's spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, released a comprehensive declaration to the nation titled: "The Second Phase of the Revolution". Listing the Islamic Republic's main achievements in the four decades since its inception and its future goals, Khamene'i drew a comparison between Iran's past and present challenges posed by the imperialists, arrogant powers and their allies, as he called them. Shortly after the revolution, he indicated, the challenges posed by Washington involved ending the intrusion by foreign (American) agents and closing down the embassy of the Zionist regime in Tehran. The challenges today, "concern Iran’s strong presence near the borders of the Zionist regime," putting an end to the American unlawful infiltration in West Asia, the Islamic Republic’s support for the Palestinian people’s resistance as well as defending Hezbollah and the resistance throughout this region. If the West’s concern in the past was to prevent Iran from buying basic armaments, Khamene'i continued, nowadays, their concern is to prevent the transfer of advanced Iranian weapons to the forces of resistance. If on those days, the U.S. presumed that the Islamic government could be vanquished with the help of a few Iranian sellouts and a small number of aircraft, he further emphasized, today they feel they need a coalition of hostile or "daunted states to counter Iran on the political and security fronts; and yet, they fail." The proposed paper aims at exploring Tehran's view on the normalization agreements between Israel and the Arab states in the Gulf, on the backdrop of Khamene'i's 2019 declaration, Iran's regional implications (in Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, etc.), and the new administration in the White House under President Biden. By relying on official statements, public discourse, and caricatures from Iranian media outlets, the paper will demonstrate how the Abraham Accords summoned diverse reactions in Iran. While most reactions reflect the Islamic Republic's longstanding anti-Israeli ideology and the "low-intensity conflict" between the two countries, on the fringe of Iranian politics one can also find voices suggesting otherwise.
Discipline
International Relations/Affairs
Geographic Area
Iran
Sub Area
Current Events