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RIYADH/CAIRO (Reuters) - Arab powers appear to be prioritizing close ties with the United States that are vital to countering Iran over traditional unswerving support for the Palestinians in their reaction to President Donald Trumps Middle East peace plan.

U.S. President Donald Trump shakes hands with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a joint news conference to announce a new Middle East peace plan proposal in the East Room of the White House in Washington, U.S., January 28, 2020. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

At a White House event on Tuesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump proposed creating a Palestinian state but demilitarized and with borders drawn to meet Israeli security needs, while granting U.S. recognition of Israeli settlements on occupied West Bank land and of Jerusalem as Israels indivisible capital.

The plan diverges from previous U.S. policy and a 2002 Arab League-endorsed initiative that offered Israel normal relations in return for an independent Palestinian state and full Israeli withdrawal from territory captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

Saudi Arabias response exemplified the careful balance now required from Gulf Arab monarchies, Egypt and Jordan which rely on U.S. military or financial backing and find themselves aligned with the United States and Israel in confronting Iran.

The Saudi Foreign Ministry expressed appreciation for Trumps efforts and support for direct peace negotiations under U.S. auspices. At the same time, state media reported that King Salman had called the Palestinian president to reassure him of Riyadhs unwavering commitment to the Palestinian cause.

Egypt and Jordan, which already have peace deals with Israel, as well as Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) used similar language that swung between hope for re-starting talks and caution against abandoning long-held stances.

Despite Palestinians rejection of the plan and boycott of Trump over perceived pro-Israel bias, three Gulf Arab states - Oman, Bahrain and the UAE - attended the White House gathering in a sign of changing times.

In a bitterly divided Arab world, backing for Palestinians has long been seen as a unifying position but also often a source of internal recriminations over the extent of that support, especially as some states have made independent, pragmatic overtures to historical adversary Israel.

Trump and Netanyahu praised the UAE, Bahraini and Omani ambassadors for attending the White House announcement: What a sign it portends - I was going to say of the future - what a sign it portends of the present, Netanyahu said to applause.

Critics were less kind, condemning the envoys presence as a shameful abandonment of the Palestinian cause.

No government or ruler wants to be seen to sell Palestine so cheaply and hand Netanyahu such a victory and, in fact, end up footing the bill, said Neil Quilliam, senior research fellow at Britains Chatham House think-tank.

At the same time, all states except perhaps Egypt are dependent upon the U.S. and will not risk angering Trump, given his propensity to act like a petulant child.

Saudi King Salman has previously reassured Arab allies he would not endorse any plan that fails to address Jerusalems disputed status or Palestinian refugees right of return, amid perceptions Riyadhs stance was changing under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is close to Trumps son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, the plans main architect.

Palestinian officials say Prince Mohammed, the de facto Saudi ruler, has pressed Abbas in the past to support the Trump plan despite serious concerns. Saudi officials have denied any differences between the king and crown prince.

Naif Madkhali, a prominent Saudi who tweets often in support of the government, blasted Trumps plan: No and a thousand nos, he wrote under the hashtag #Down_with_the_deal_of_the_century.

In Bahrain, which hosted a U.S.-led conference last June on the Palestinian economy as part of Trumps broader peace plan, opposition groups came out strongly against the proposal.

Whoever today gives up the Holy Land of Palestine will tomorrow give up his land in order to preserve his seat, tweeted Waad party leader Ibrahim Sharif. Treachery is a stab in the back and is not a point of view.

Any change to the consensus on refugees right of return to what is now Israel and the Palestinian Territories would reverberate loudest in Jordan, which absorbed more Palestinians than any other country after Israels creation in 1948.

Palestinians, which by some estimates now account for more than half of Jordans population, hold full citizenship but are marginalized and seen as a political threat by some people of Jordanian descent.

The biggest risk is to Jordan, where sentiment towards the issue and rising levels of discontent converge, said Quilliam.

Analysts predicted most Egyptians would reject the plan but not present a problem to President Abdel Fattah al-Sisis government, which has already cracked down harshly on dissent.

I feel angry and helpless as an Egyptian, an Arab, a Muslim and above all a human... prominent blogger ZainabMohamed wrote of Trumps plan.

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry criticized Arab countries after their generally positive comments on Trumps plan.

Following the revelation of details of the American-Israeli conspiracy, it is unacceptable to hide behind ambiguous and murky statements in order to escape confronting this conspiracy, it said in a statement.

However, a spokesman for Abbas said later he had received calls from Saudi King Salman and Lebanese President Michel Aoun supportive of the Palestinian position.

Reporting by Stephen Kalin in Riyadh, Lisa Barrington and Alexander Cornwell in Dubai, Amina Ismail and Ulf Laessing in Cairo, Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza and Ali Sawafta in West Bank; Writing by Stephen Kalin; Editing by Mark Heinrich

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Arabs prioritize key ties with U.S. against Iran in reacting to Trump peace plan - Reuters

Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Wednesday denounced as satanic a US plan for solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and predicted that Muslim nations will undoubtedly prevent the proposal from being put into practice.

US President Donald Trump unveiled his long-awaited peace plan at the White House on Tuesday.

To the dismay of US politicians, the satanic, evil US policy about Palestine the so-called Deal Of The Century will never bear fruit, by the grace of God, Khamenei wrote on his official Twitter account.

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About the Jewishization of al-Quds and saying it should be in the hands of the Jews, theyre talking foolishly and unwisely, he said, using an Arabic name for Jerusalem.

The issue of Palestine will never be forgotten, Khameini continued. The Palestinian nation and all Muslim nations will definitely stand up to them and not allow the so-called Deal Of The Century to be realized.

US President Donald Trump andIsraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahuparticipate in a joint statement in the East Room of the White House, in Washington, DC, on January 28, 2020. (Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images/AFP)

The plan grants Israel much of what it has sought in decades of international diplomacy, namely control over Jerusalem as its undivided capital, rather than a city to share with the Palestinians. The plan also lets Israel annex West Bank settlements.

Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also rejected the Trump proposal, saying, The plan to give Jerusalem to Israel is absolutely unacceptable.

However, the US Gulf state ally Qatar said it welcomed the US efforts to broker longstanding peace, while warning that it was unattainable without concessions to the Palestinians.

The Palestinians angrily rejected the entire plan.

This conspiracy deal will not pass. Our people will take it to the dustbin of history, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said Tuesday.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas gestures as he delivers a speech in the West Bank city of Ramallah following the announcement by US President Donald Trump of the Mideast peace plan, January 28, 2020. (ABBAS MOMANI/AFP)

As part of the plan, future Palestinian statehood would be based on a series of strict conditions including requiring the future state to be demilitarized.

The plan also lets Israel annex West Bank settlements and would also end hopes for a so-called right of return. Palestinians who fled or were forced out when the Jewish state was created in 1948, and their millions of descendants, would no longer have a case to go back.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who stood alongside Trump in the White House as the US leader presented the plan, immediately declared his support for the scheme.

Link:
Iran's Khamenei vows 'satanic' US peace plan will not be realized - The Times of Israel

Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khomeini and his media-savvy allies duped Western journalists and intellectuals into supporting his rise to theocratic tyranny, according to a new history.

He had manipulated the secular left and the Islamic modernists, as a vehicle, and he would dispose of them at the moment of his choosing, Kim Ghattas writes in Black Wave, a new survey of the four-decade rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

That reflection caps Khomeinis meteoric rise from a tired exile in Iraq to the pinnacle of political power in Tehran. He was propelled, in part, by the gullibility of prominent French thinkers and Western journalists who were horrified by the brutality of the Iranian monarchy but failed to recognize the irredeemable monster who had come to live among them in the four months prior to the Iranian revolution of 1979.

They wanted to believe in Khomeini, the sage under the apple tree, Ghattas writes of Frances leftist intellectuals.

Their support played a crucial role in swelling Khomeinis international influence in the waning days of the monarchy, as the shahs security services were blamed for a deadly theater fire and came under increasing pressure for other human rights abuses.

In Neauphle-le-Chateau, over the course of a four-month stay, he would give 132 interviews and become the face of the revolution, recognized throughout the world, she writes. The seventy-six-year-old cleric was invigorated.

Ghattas, a longtime BBC journalist who is now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Institute, wrote Black Wave in an effort to explain what happened to us? That is, how did the more vibrant Middle East that older generations can still remember degenerate into the violence and chaos that she witnessed as a child born in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War? The tendency for Western media to project their own beliefs or preferences onto people who they dont understand is one of the answers that emerges from her exploration of that large question.

The strategy was twofold: radical, reactionary messages for inside Iran, carefully curated words for Western ears, she observes in the book, which was released Tuesday.

Khomeini didnt have the public relations savvy to execute that plan on his own. Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, a close ally who would emerge as the first president of the Islamic Republic of Iran prior to his own exile, managed his public image carefully.

Banisadr translated (and sometimes purposely mistranslated), adding context and rounding the edges for sensitive western reporters, Ghattas writes. The resulting impression was that of an ascetic sage who had no interest in politics and would 'spend the rest of his days in a seminary in Qom' once his goals of removing the shah and returning to Iran had been achieved.

This image held great appeal among Frances leftist intellectuals, who nurtured their own charming self-image as a revolutionary force.

Hugely influential in shaping public opinion, they were anti-establishment, anti-power, and anti-imperial, Ghattas writes. They wanted to believe in Khomeini, the sage under the apple tree.

They would soon be undeceived. I will decide the government, a government for the people, Khomeini said after arriving in Iran on Feb. 1, 1979.

That declaration was at odds with public image he cultivated while living in France in the fall of 1968, and it soon became clear which version of Khomeini the theocratic tyrant or the meek sage reflected his true ambitions.

The executions began just before midnight on February 15, on the roof of the school: four leading generals were shot, after a summary trial in which they were accused of treason and mass murder, the book said. Photographs of the four generals' bodies in a pool of blood, blindfolded, their hands tied behind their backs, were splashed on the front pages of newspapers the next day, making international headlines. There was no more pretending.

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'They wanted to believe in Khomeini': Book shows how Iranian mullahs manipulated Western media and 'secular left' to win in 1979 - Washington Examiner

Six women use the power of their camera lenses to illustrate the societal change in Iran since 1979. With a focus on what it means to be a woman living under an oppressive regime, Hengameh Golestan, Newsha Tavakolian, Shadi Ghadirian, Malekeh Nayiny, Gohar Dashti and Mitra Tabrizian use powerful images that play with color, setting and expression to give American viewers a look into Iranian life before and after that landmark year. The exhibit, entitled My Iran: Six Women Photographers, is on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art until Feb. 9.

Golestan opens the narrative in March 1979, planting viewers right at the flashpoint of the Iranian Revolution, which saw a dramatic change in cultural life within Iran. Golestan, 27 years old at the time, depicts womens resistance to the imposition of policies that diminished their role and status in society.

An untitled photo from Golestans series, Witness 1979, depicts a dense crowd of impassioned women, just before they were legally required to wear hijabs in public, bracing the cold and the snow to express their defiance toward the revolution in protest. Caught mid-sentence with their fists raised, the energy of the crowd in the black-and-white image is palpable, compelling and remarkable as compared to the realities of life for Iranian women today, where their role in society is subjugated.

The explicit displays of freedom and civil disobedience that make up Golestans collection stand apart from the portrayals of modern-day Iran that Dadhti and Ghadirian have to offer, yet those portrayals also convey a degree of discontent and protest, albeit more subtly.

Ghadirians untitled series from 1999 creatively stages modestly dressed young women in the style of 19th-century portraits. The sepia tone and dated backdrops of the portraits contrast with the objects the women are holding, like a Pepsi can in one and a newspaper in another. These symbols of modernity contrast with the vintage, creating an eerie effect of a country stuck in the crossroads between two time periods.

Amidst the traditional elements of the portraits, little present-day props and signs of western influence cleverly indicate small acts of rebellion. Though obviously different in composition and mood from Golestans Witness 1979 images, the rebellious spirit within these artists has not disappeared.

Unlike Golestan and Ghadirian, Gohar Dashti was born after the Iranian Revolution, and the most historic and formative event of her lifetime was the Iran-Iraq War. Her work is centered on the persistent legacy of that conflict and introduces another layer of complexity to the exhibit with photo series such as Slow Decay and Iran, Untitled.

An untitled photo from Iran, Untitled in 2013 shows 11 women, head to toe in black, seated on a couch in the desert. The far-away shot expresses the desolation of the womens surroundings. Their expressions are somewhat unreadable; most are looking away from the camera, others faces are obscured by large sunglasses and a few look down to read the books in their laps. Each appears to be in her own world, highlighting the social isolation of women in Iran. With attention to these details, Dashti packs her photography with profound meaning and commentary.

Nearly 40 years later in the modern day, the most recent look at life for Iranian women is Tavakolians Blank Pages of an Iranian Photo Album. Tavakolians focus with her work is social documentary. Her portrayals of marginalization and resilience in photos like Somayeh resemble the themes conveyed in Dashtis photography. Somayeh depicts a young woman situated among gray, barren branches with a cold and impersonal-looking city in the far background.

Perhaps the most stylistically creative of the collections belongs to Nayiny, who uses digitization to combine photos from her own family albums with other images and different backdrops in abstract, visually dynamic ways. She combines old and new by injecting people from the past into modern settings. Nayinys approach looks admiringly to the past as compared to some of the others critiques in the exhibit of both the past and present.

My Iran, though focusing largely on the experiences of Iranian women, also gives attention to broad issues affecting Iranians both inside and outside of Iran, such as migration. Tabrizians Border expertly captures the pain associated with leaving ones homeland, even though staying would mean tolerating oppressive rule.

All six photographers present compelling images which work together to fill out a complete and multi-dimensional picture of their Iran, their home. They highlight moments in modern Iranian history that defined culture and society with attention to the experiences of women over time Iranians who have left their home and Iranians wistfully looking to the West as a better future. The narrative they collectively weave, though embedded with moments of pain and loss, ultimately expresses courageous resilience and hope for the future of women in Iran.

Link:
'My Iran' Spotlights 6 Women Photographers Telling the Story of Their Country - Georgetown University The Hoya

Irans Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, in 2019. Zarif recently renewed Irans threat of withdrawing from the NPT in the event that the UN Security Council reimposes multilateral sanctions against Iran. Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons.

By all accounts, the approaching 2020 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) conference will have to address new challenges on both the disarmament and nonproliferation fronts. These range from the failure of nuclear weapons states to disarm as the treaty requires to the collapse of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, the uncertainties surrounding the future of New START after its expiration in early 2021, North Koreas relentless nuclearization, and Irans repeated explicit threats to quit the NPT ever since the United States withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal in May 2018. Taken as a whole, these developments represent a big leap backward, imperiling international peace and security. Coinciding with the 75th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings, the upcoming NPT conference is a unique opportunity to address the root causes of the NPTs new crisis and to map out prudent steps toward crisis prevention, particularly in the volatile Middle East.

Irans leaders are considering whether to ditch their safeguards agreements with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and to withdraw from the NPT if confronted with new UN sanctions. Though up until now all of the sanctions have been unilaterally applied by the United States, renewed multilateral sanctions may follow the European decision to trigger the so-called dispute resolution mechanism of the 2015 agreement. Triggering this mechanism means that, unless the European countries take one of several off-ramps during the dispute resolution process, the matter will end up at the UN Security Council, which can snap back the muted UN sanctions on Iran. Although European diplomats may not have the intention of letting the issue reach the Security Council, their gamble is plagued with risks. Moreover, the snapping back of UN sanctions would compound the economic woes stemming from the Trump administrations relentless maximum pressure strategy against Iran.

Irans threat to exit the NPT was initially floated by President Hassan Rouhani in his May 2018 letter to the other signatories of the nuclear agreementChina, France, Germany, Russia, and the United Kingdomfollowing Trumps announcement on the United States withdrawal. Since then, frustrated by European governments failure to implement their obligations under the deal, above all by providing access to European banks and financial systems and by purchasing Iranian oil, Iran has taken five incremental steps in reducing its compliance with the agreement. Nevertheless, Iran has maintained that these are reversible steps and that it will resume compliance only if the other parties honor their commitment, the argument being that, to paraphrase Irans Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, Iran cannot be expected to be a unilateral party to a multilateral agreement.

Although it is difficult to know whether or when Iran will make good on its threat to exit the NPT, the West would be remiss not to take it seriously. In a precious few months, UN sanctions on Iran may be snapped back, triggering a tsunami of Iranian reactions under a firm conviction that Iran has been unjustly punished. Already, Iran is incensed that the US presidents extrajudicial assassination of Irans top general, Qassem Soleimani, has not drawn any UN condemnation, just as Washingtons unilateral exit from a UN-backed international agreement has received nothing more than statements of regret. Rubbing salt in the wounds, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom have repeatedly issued false statements claiming that they have fulfilled their nuclear deal obligations, drawing terse responses from Iran. As a result, while the US assassination of Soleimani has closed all pathways for US-Iran diplomacy for the foreseeable future, Europes perceived common cause with the United States has caused a growing divide between Europe and Iranone that will boil over if triggering the dispute resolution mechanism yields a new round of UN sanctions in the proximate future.

What would an Iranian NPT withdrawal look like? It would spell the end of all IAEA inspections of Irans nuclear facilities and the dawn of a new era of complete lack of transparency on Irans nuclear activities. This would be a sharp departure from the policy under the nuclear agreement, under which Iran allows short-notice inspections and 24-hour surveillance by the IAEA. And to get a sense of what might happen beyond that, one need only to look at the case of North Korea, which withdrew from the treaty in 2003 and tested its first nuclear weapon three years later, in 2006.

One idea making the rounds in Iran is to preempt the European effort to snap back the UN sanctions by hitting the United Nations with a conditional notice of withdrawal from the NPT, stipulating that it will withhold its decision to quit the treaty only if the other signatories to the nuclear agreement uphold their commitments. The advantage of such a conditional notice of withdrawal is that, unlike North Koreas exit, Irans move would not be automatically connected to a pernicious nuclear weapons drive, but rather to Irans legitimate demand for fair play and the end of Western double standards exacting a heavy toll on Irans economy and the well-being of its population.

Without a doubt, Irans NPT exit would represent a severe blow to the global nonproliferation regime, irrespective of Irans stated intentions. This is all the more reason for the European governments to actively explore diplomatic avenues to prevent such an unwanted outcome, requiring serious policy adjustments on their part. Instead of unwisely following in the Trump administrations footsteps, European governments should use the dispute resolution mechanisms Joint Commission, take a firm stance vis--vis US withdrawal, and provide real meaning to their various countermeasures intended to offset the unilateral US sanctions. This might include a new blocking statute that forbids European companies from complying with US sanctions as well as a new financial mechanism to foster lawful humanitarian trade with Iran. Due to US opposition, these countermeasures have heretofore remained as merely commitments on paper.

Going forward, either Europe will need to retreat from its premature and unwise triggering of the dispute resolution mechanism and seek an off-ramp alternative or it must face the possibility of the dire consequences of Irans withdrawal from the NPT and all of its NPT-related IAEA obligations, which would in turn have serious repercussions for the international nonproliferation regime. This nightmare scenario, although a distinct possibility on the horizon, is not inevitable and, indeed, much depends on European smart diplomacy to avert it.

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Iran's impending exit from the NPT: A new nuclear crisis - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists