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Exercises include shooting at sea and air targets and liberating hijacked ships, as well as search-and-rescue and anti-piracy operations.

Tehran, Iran Iranian forces have concluded a two-day naval exercise with Russia in the northern part of the Indian Ocean.

Forces and vessels from the navy divisions of both the Iranian army and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) participated in the drill, which kicked off on Tuesday, alongside several vessels from the Russian navy.

Admiral Gholamreza Tahani, spokesman for the drill, said the exercise his country was conducting with Russia was flexibly designed to allow several other countries to join it at any time, adding that the Indian navy had requested to join.

Hossein Khanzadi, commander of the Iranian navy, had said the Chinese navy would participate in the drill over an area of 17,000 square kilometres (6,500 square miles).

Iran, Russia and China held similar exercises in 2019.

But on Thursday, an Indian news website, timesnownews.com, carried a statement by the Indian navy denying New Delhis participation in the naval exercise.

Participation of China also could not be confirmed, and Tahani, spokesman, did not mention Beijing and New Delhi as the exercise concluded on Wednesday.

Tahani said the all-Iranian frigate Jamaran, unveiled in 2010, led the exercise while Iranian and Russian navy helicopters provided air monitoring and support.

The exercises will include shooting at sea and air targets and liberating hijacked ships, as well as search-and-rescue and anti-piracy operations. Iran says it hopes to exchange information and technical and tactical experience while becoming better-equipped to fight sea theft and terrorism.

Irans army and the IRGC have conducted several drills in the past two months in a show of force amid tensions with the United States.

These exercises saw a variety of locally manufactured long-range missiles, drones, tanks, warships, submarines and helicopters tested on land, sea and air targets.

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Iran, Russia conduct joint naval drill in Indian Ocean | Military News | Al Jazeera

Biden is scheduled to address world leaders Friday at a virtual session of the Munich Security Conference, remarks sure to be watched carefully by Iran as well as other countries trying to divine his intentions for the nuclear deal.

The State Department said Thursday that the United States would accept an expected European Union invitation to attend a gathering of parties to the original deal, including Iran, the timing of which was not immediately clear.

In a briefing with reporters, a senior State Department official called the prospect of meeting the Iranians face-to-face a step more than a breakthrough.

Overall, developments so far suggest that a full restoration of the original deal, officially called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), may be a far messier, longer-lasting set of negotiations than what many observers had expected if it happens at all.

There is a window of opportunity that simply will not last, warned Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association. The slow pace of deliberations on the part of the United States will jeopardize Bidens stated goal, which is to restore the agreement and to build on the JCPOA.

But there are a lot of different views within the administration, one of the people familiar with the discussions said, adding, I think theres an instinct to return to the deal, but thats not a preordained outcome.

I dont get the sense they have a timeline, like they dont have dates and times for reentering the deal, a Capitol Hill Democratic aide added.

One internal administration debate about the next steps has largely boiled down to this: Whether to aim for a return to the original nuclear deal first or seek a broader deal from the start. A broader deal could possibly include non-nuclear aspects, such as limits on Irans ballistic missile program, and have provisions that last longer than the original deal or are permanent.

Either way, one option on the table is to have some sort of interim agreement that can build confidence on both sides.

The interim agreement would not necessarily look like the original deal, people familiar with the discussions said. It could involve giving Iran some limited sanctions relief such as allowing oil sales in exchange for Tehran halting some of the moves it has made since President Donald Trump pulled out of the agreement, such as enriching uranium to 20 percent purity.

One senior Biden administration official, however, insisted that the debate has passed. The agreed-upon goal remains to return to the original nuclear deal if Iran complies with it, the official said. But exactly what steps must be taken to achieve that goal and at what pace are still a matter of debate and discussion, the official said.

The people familiar with the discussions did not know or declined to say who among Biden aides was arguing for which tactics. Some stressed that the administration, not even a month old, is still filling key positions at the State Department, White House and beyond that are relevant to the Iran discussion.

Three of the people, however, noted that Brett McGurk, a senior Middle East official on the National Security Council staff, is among the more hawkish voices on Iran and that national security adviser Jake Sullivan at times takes a harder line than many of his colleagues.

Both of these senior national security officials may be more inclined to aim for a bigger deal immediately, rather than trying to resurrect the 2015 version, people familiar with the discussions said. That being said, Sullivan recently declared that containing Irans nuclear program is a critical early priority of the administration, signaling an eagerness to resolve the standoff.

Rob Malley, Bidens special envoy for the Iran talks, is known to be more of an advocate for a return to the original nuclear deal. Others likely to be on his side include Jeff Prescott, a top official in the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. The people familiar with the discussions said they werent entirely certain where Secretary of State Antony Blinken stands.

A spokesperson for the National Security Council did not offer comment. A spokesperson for the State Department also did not immediately offer comment.

Washington politics, too, are a factor, some analysts say.

Sen. Bob Menendez, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is one of several Democrats who joined Republicans in opposing the original deal during the Obama years. (Menendez also opposed Trumps decision to walk away from the deal without what the New Jersey senator considered a decent back up plan to constrain Iran.)

Menendez has pushed Biden to take a tough stance and said the president should not give Iran significant sanctions relief before it returns to the negotiating table.

Because Menendez plays a key role in Senate confirmation hearings for Biden nominees, theres extra sensitivity about angering him when it comes to Iran, two of the people familiar with the Biden teams discussions said.

The 2015 JCPOA lifted an array of U.S. and international economic sanctions on Iran in exchange for severe restrictions on the Islamist-led countrys nuclear program.

The deal was an international one: the United States, China, Russia, Germany, France, Britain and Iran were partners in the negotiation. The United Nations and the European Union also played key roles.

Struck during the presidency of Barack Obama, its supporters hailed it for dramatically curtailing Irans nuclear program, but its opponents cast it as too weak and too generous in terms of the sanctions relief it offered Iran in return.

After railing against the agreement for years, Trump formally pulled out in May 2018. The former president argued that the agreement was too narrow because it dealt only with Irans nuclear program and not other malign actions by Tehran, which has been a U.S. adversary for four decades.Trump also said he did not like the fact that some of the deals provisions would expire.

In the months and years after pulling the U.S. from the JCPOA, Trump not only reimposed the nuclear-related sanctions that had been lifted under the 2015 deal, but also added on new ones targeting an array of Iranian entities.

The beefed-up sanctions regime will complicate any return to the deal, especially given that many of the sanctions would penalize institutions from other countries including U.S. allies in Europe that want to do business in Iran.

Iran has technically remained a party to the agreement, which is still functional to a limited degree. But since the U.S. walked away from it, Tehran has taken several steps that have put it out of compliance and closer to building a bomb. The moves, analysts say, have been part of a campaign aimed at pushing America back to the negotiating table while also pressuring European leaders to find ways to ease the substantial economic pain the sanctions are causing Iran.

Recently, Iran has warned that starting next week it will take steps to scale back the enhanced access it gives to international inspectors who monitor its nuclear program under whats commonly called the additional protocol. However, Iran will continue to allow inspectors to access its facilities under its basic agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

In a joint statement released Thursday, Blinken and his counterparts from France, Germany and Britain, called on Iran not to proceed with its clampdown on inspections. The three urged Iran to consider the consequences of such grave action, particularly at this time of renewed diplomatic opportunity.

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Many Biden aides are hesitant to appear as if they are capitulating to Iranian pressure by making deal-related moves to coincide with next weeks deadline on the additional protocol, according to people familiar with the discussions.

The joint statement also stated that Secretary Blinken reiterated that, as President Biden has said, if Iran comes back into strict compliance with its commitments under the JCPOA, the United States will do the same and is prepared to engage in discussions with Iran toward that end.

The expected European Union invitation for the United States to rejoin the original participants in the deal will likely lead to the first discussions at least in a publicly acknowledged way between the Biden administration and Iran. Analysts anticipate that the gathering will take place in March at what was already a tentatively planned meeting of the joint commission that oversees the nuclear deals implementation.

Separately, the Biden administration on Thursday told the U.N. Security Council that it was rescinding a Trump administration claim last year that all U.N. sanctions had been reimposed on Iran, according to a Reuters report. Trump aides made that assertion by insisting the U.S. could still trigger a snap back of the sanctions despite having left the nuclear deal, a claim rejected by most members of the Security Council.

The rescinding of the Trump claim may appease Iran to some extent. But broadly speaking, people familiar with the Biden administrations discussions said it has done little at least publicly to give Tehran hope that a resumption of the deal, and an end to sanctions, is likely anytime soon.

Even the U.S. rhetoric so far, from various podiums and Biden himself, has emphasized that Iran is out of compliance with the agreement, rather than acknowledging that the United States first initiated the breach of terms.

Malley has spent his short time so far as envoy reaching out to the other parties to the 2015 agreement, including Russia and China, but not to Iran itself, according to people familiar with the discussions.

Malley also has been in touch with representatives of Israel as well as Arab countries, people familiar with the discussions said. The Israelis and some key Arab partners of the United States opposed the 2015 agreement and have asked Washington to consult with them or even give them a seat at the table on future negotiations with Iran.

Some advocates of a speedy return to the 2015 agreement argue that time is of the essence, in part because Iranian presidential elections are set for June. The Iranian politicians likely to triumph are those who are even more anti-American than the ones who negotiated the deal.

Still, those who argue against any quick U.S. return to the deal point out that no matter who wins the Iranian election, the economic pain the country is suffering from sanctions and the coronavirus pandemic will force a return to the negotiating table.

Iran is in desperate financial and political straits right now, said Gabriel Noronha, a former State Department official. We have no reason to relent on the pressure, especially to get back to a deal which is already well on the way to expiring.

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Biden aides debate how, or if, to save original Iran deal - POLITICO

The New York Times

SAN ANTONIO Carrol Anderson spent much of his life in southeast Texas, where the most feared natural disasters spin up from the Gulf of Mexico during the warm months of hurricane season. But last week, Anderson, a 75-year-old who breathed with the help of oxygen tanks, knew that a different kind of storm was heading his way. To prepare, he ordered a fresh supply of oxygen that his stepdaughter said never arrived. There was a spare tank, however, in the pickup outside his one-story brick house in Crosby, Texas, just northeast of Houston. So when Anderson, an Army veteran who went by Andy, was found dead inside his truck Tuesday, his stepdaughter figured he had gone outside to retrieve it. His main tank, back in the house, runs on electricity, and the power had gone out the night before as a deadly cold descended on much of Texas. Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times While the final tally could be much higher, Anderson was among at least 58 people who died in storm-affected areas stretching to Ohio, victims of carbon monoxide poisoning, car crashes, drownings, house fires and hypothermia. In Galveston County, along the Texas Gulf Coast, the authorities said two residents had died from exposure to the cold and one person from possible carbon monoxide poisoning. Four other deaths remained under investigation and were possibly linked to the frigid weather. County Judge Mark Henry, the countys top elected official, said he would have evacuated some of his most vulnerable residents before the winter storm had he known that power outages would plunge the county into darkness for a few days. He said the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the states power grid, had warned only of rolling blackouts. Instead, most residents were without power for at least 48 hours. We would have been happy to order an evacuation if wed been told Sunday the power was going to go out and stay out for four days, he said, noting the county is more accustomed to ordering evacuations before hurricanes. A spokeswoman for ERCOT said Friday that the surge in demand stressed the power grid, a crisis so dire that the local utilities were not able to rotate the outages. At its height, about 4 million Texans were without power this week as temperatures plummeted to the teens and single digits. About 165,000 remained without electricity on Friday, though millions were still without running water or under notices to boil their tap water. Still, there were signs of relief. In hard-hit Austin, City Manager Spencer Cronk said Friday that more than 1 million gallons of water would arrive over the next two days. The city plans to set up distribution centers, and Cronk said water would be delivered to the citys most vulnerable citizens, such as older people and those without homes. Greg Meszaros, the director of Austins water utility, said he expected that most residents would have their water pressure restored over the weekend. Boil water advisories should be lifted sometime next week, he said. Coming into clearer view were the dimensions of a public health crisis exacerbated by poverty, desperation and, in some cases, a lack of understanding of cold-weather safety. Texas hospitals and health providers saw more than 700 visits related to carbon monoxide poisoning between Monday and Wednesday. Thayer Smith, division chief with the Austin Fire Department, said his city had seen dozens of incidents of toxic exposure from people burning charcoal in their homes. The weather also hampered the response to the coronavirus pandemic. The White House on Friday said 6 million doses of coronavirus vaccines had been held up because of snowstorms across the country, creating a backlog affecting every state and throwing off the pace of vaccination appointments over the next week. In Texas, hospitals spent the week grappling with burst pipes, power outages and acute water shortages, making it difficult to care for patients. In Abilene, authorities said a man died at the Hendrick Medical Center after he was unable to get dialysis treatment at the site. Large amounts of filtered water, in addition to electricity and heat, are required to properly provide care for dialysis patients, and water at the hospital was shut down, said Cande Flores, the Abilene fire chief. Flores said that at least four people had died in Abilene as a result of the state power grid failure, including a homeless man who died from exposure to the cold, a 60-year-old man who was found dead in his home and an 86-year-old woman whose daughter found her frozen in her backyard. Elsewhere in the state, a 69-year-old man was found dead inside his home in a rural community south of San Antonio, where he lived alone. He did not have electricity, and the authorities said his bedroom was 35 degrees when they found him. In Houston, an Ethiopian immigrant died in her idling car, which was parked in her garage, where she sat while charging her phone. The woman, Etenesh Mersha, was talking to a friend when she started to feel tired. She tried to drink water, said Negash Desta, a relative by marriage to Mersha. After she told her friend she couldnt talk anymore, there was no response after that. The friend tried to call the police in Houston but did not have an address, Desta said. The friend turned to Facebook, where she found Desta. Hours later, he eventually received a message about what had happened and alerted the police. They found an entire family, poisoned. When they get in, they found the mother and daughter were just dead and the son and father alive. They had all fainted, he said, adding that the car had still been running. The daughter, Rakeb Shalemu, was 7 years old. Mershas husband and 8-year-old son were hospitalized. Desta said that the husband has since been released and that the boy, Beimnet Shalemu, was still in the intensive critical unit. Near Houston in Conroe, Texas, an 11-year-old boy, Cristian Pineda, was found dead in his bed on Monday morning. His family had no power the night before, and the parents, the boy and his siblings had huddled together in one bedroom, Lt. James Kelemen of the Conroe Police Department said Friday. Like Anderson and Mersha and her family, Cristian was the focus of a hastily assembled GoFundMe page. It requested donations to cover the expenses of his burial in Honduras, where his family is from. It had raised more than $38,000 as of Friday afternoon. The page showed a picture of a boy in a thin red hoodie, smiling and standing in the snow. On Tuesday, while Andersons wife was mopping up their living room after a frozen pipe burst, he walked to the garage to try to get a generator going, hoping he could help clean up with a Shop-Vac. His wife would not know until later that he had walked to his truck in search of oxygen, said his stepdaughter, Brandi Campanile. It was 19 degrees. His spare oxygen tank, it would turn out, was empty. He was trying to get oxygen and it was just a losing battle, Campanile said Friday. Texas is not meant to handle freezing temperatures. Its not something that happens out here. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. 2021 The New York Times Company

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Iran: US must lift sanctions before it lives up to nuke deal

State Dept. Spokesman Ned Price, seen on Monday, says the Biden administration is willing to talk with Iranian and European officials about the nuclear deal. Kevin Lamarque/AP hide caption

State Dept. Spokesman Ned Price, seen on Monday, says the Biden administration is willing to talk with Iranian and European officials about the nuclear deal.

The United States said on Thursday it was ready to restart diplomacy with Tehran around a nuclear deal sealed between Iran and world powers, but which the Trump administration had abandoned in 2018.

"The United States would accept an invitation from the European Union High Representative to attend a meeting of the P5+1 and Iran to discuss a diplomatic way forward on Iran's nuclear program," State Department spokesman Ned Price said, referring to the U.N. Security Council's five permanent members and Germany.

Speaking to reporters on background, two senior State Department officials described two steps that Washington had taken to remove what they said were "obstacles to multilateral diplomacy." The officials said the U.S. had reversed travel restrictions that the Trump administration had put in place on Iranian diplomats at the United Nations. The Biden administration also told the United Nations earlier on Thursday it was rescinding a Trump administration claim that U.N. sanctions against Iran "snapped back" and should be enforced.

Even if the meeting does happen, one of the officials noted, it would not necessarily be a "breakthrough," but it was the first step toward a return to diplomacy.

Earlier on Thursday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with major European allies France, Germany and the United Kingdom and reaffirmed President Biden's position that should Iran come back into compliance with the nuclear deal, the United States would do the same "and is prepared to engage in discussions with Iran toward that end." Iran insists that the U.S. should return to the deal first before it makes any moves.

The Biden administration moves represent the first significant, if small, steps toward restoring diplomacy on the 2015 Iran nuclear deal sealed during the Obama administration, in which Iran's nuclear program was restricted in exchange for sanctions relief.

The diplomatic offer also comes days ahead of a deadline Iran has set in which it has demanded the Biden administration start reversing sanctions imposed under the Trump administration, or else it would ban snap inspections by the IAEA, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog.

Former President Trump had withdrawn from the accord in 2018 and reimposed sanctions on Iran. A year later, Iran began breaching commitments made in the deal.

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U.S. Ready To Talk With Iran On Nuclear Deal : NPR

This week we learned that Vice President Kamala Harris spoke with French President Emmanuel Macron by phone on 15 February, an unusual move for foreign policy execution in the modern era. When personal contact between national leaders is a matter of merely picking up the phone, it is not the drama it was in centuries past of envoys and surrogates especially in the case of close allies and great power club members.

According to the readout of the phone call, it was certainly a foreign policy communication:

Vice President Kamala Harris spoke today with President Emmanuel Macron of France, and expressed her commitment to strengthening bilateral ties between the United States and France and to revitalizing the transatlantic alliance. Vice President Harris and President Macron agreed on the need for close bilateral and multilateral cooperation to address COVID-19, climate change, and support democracy at home and around the world.They also discussed numerous regional challenges, including those in the Middle East and Africa, and the need to confront them together. The Vice President thanked President Macron for his leadership on the issue of gender equality and for Frances contribution to NASAs Mars 2020 Perseverance rover.

The National Pulse suggests its bizarre for Harris to make such calls this early in the administration. She also spoke to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada on 1 February.

Trending: How long will the Left put up with Bidens candid observations (aka bigoted comments)?

At the Daily Wire, Amanda Prestigiacomo confirmed that Mike Pence had occasionally, but rarely, made calls for foreign heads of government, and had not done so at all in Trumps final year in office.

On Friday, President Biden himself spoke by online videoconference to the other members of the G7, as they held a virtual summit.

The progress of foreign policy continues to be rapidly away from the normal bounds of expectation in more substantial ways. Theres little point in trying to make these thought transitions gracefully; they arent graceful to begin with, so any such attempt would be mischaracterizing them anyway. We live in interesting times.

In the intertwined matters of Iran, Iraq, the GCC nations, and Israel, the following things have happened in the last week.

Iran gets a boon

On Thursday, the U.S. announced a rescission of the 2020 judgment by Trump that we have the authority to invoke a snapback of Iran sanctions due to Irans non-compliance with the terms of the 2015 JCPOA, or Iran deal.

That Trump decision was based on UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which implemented the JCPOA. UNSCR 2231 has been in force and the U.S. is still a party to it, although Trump pulled us out of the JCPOA in order to reimpose U.S. sanctions on Iran. UNSCR 2231 constituted the authority the Trump administration was using to invoke a snapback.

The import of the snapback, per se, was for nations that did business with Iran, in violation of the UN sanctions. The Trump decision meant that those nations entities companies, banks, individuals could be subject to U.S. sanctions along with Iran.

So the Biden administration has rescinded that decision. The third-party nations no longer face U.S. sanctions if they violate the UN sanctions still invoke-able for breaches of Irans requirements under UNSCR 2231.

This was done so quietly you probably heard nothing about it. It means, of course, that there can be a free-for-all of economic reengagement with Iran by other nations.

At the same time (literally; these reports came out within moments of each other on Thursday), the Biden administration signaled its willingness to hold talks with Iran if the European Union extended an invitation.

And darned if the EU isnt eyeing just such an invitation:

We are ready to show up if such a meeting were to take place, the [U.S.] official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity, after talks among the U.S., British, French and German foreign ministers. Earlier, a senior EU official said he was prepared to convene such a meeting among the parties to the deal: Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States.

Go figure. To summarize, Iran has received the major concession of sanctions being lifted on third parties without having to do anything. This concession was obviously worked out among the U.S. and the EU-3.

Here its worth a reminder that one of the first things Iran did after Biden took office was test-launch a rocket with the potential to propel an ICBM, one that could reach not only Western Europe but North America. So maybe Iran did have to do something to win the sanctions concession from the new U.S. administration. Depends on how you look at it.

U.S. reengages with Iran

Good times, good times. But theres more. Iran proxy-engaged the U.S. a few days ago, with a rocket attack on a U.S. compound in Erbil on Monday, 15 February. The attack was claimed by an Iran-backed militia, Saraya Awliya al-Dam, linked to Kataib Hezbollah, a creature of the Iranian Qods Force under Qasem Soleimani. Fourteen rockets reportedly made impact on the compounds facilities, killing a U.S.-employed individual (not a U.S. citizen) and injuring several Americans, including one in uniform.

As Defense One notes, Erbil has been quiet for a number of years now. This was an unusual attack.

In what must be the alliances fastest reaction ever, NATO promptly decided to deploy a force of some 4,000 troops to Iraq. In the context of NATOs recent profile in Iraq, thats a lot of troops.

The 30-member alliance will increase its personnel in Iraq from 500 to around 4,000, The Hill reports, a move to prevent the war-torn country from becoming a breeding ground for terrorists, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg announced Thursday.

But NATOs not blaming the deployment on Iran. Combatting ISIS, in the wake of an attack claimed by an Iran-sponsored militia, is the justification for putting up to 4,000 NATO troops in Iraq again, after a long hiatus in which European NATO had very little footprint there.

Heres the sequence in The Hill report, stating the justifying event and NATOs rationale for sending troops:

Justification: NATO willexpand its security training mission in Iraqby thousands of troops following adeadly rocket attack on a military air baseearlier this week.

NATO statement: ISIS still operates in Iraq and we need to make sure theyre not able to return, [Jens] Stoltenberg told reporters at the end of a two-day virtual NATO defense ministers meeting.

Without suggesting ISIS is not a problem, this frankly doesnt compute. Rocket attacks of the kind seen in Erbil are very much the pattern of the Iran-backed militias, whereas they are not characteristic of ISIS. Theres nothing in the attack on Erbil to suggest its imperative to mount a preemptive response to ISIS, per se.

But heres what a force of up to 4,000 would do. It would put NATO in a position to perform the service Obama had U.S. troops doing in the period from late 2013 to 2016: providing fire support and air cover for Iran-backed militias in Iraq. As long as those militias were purporting to battle ISIS, the Obama administration actually used U.S. assets to support their seizure and occupation of territory in Iraq. The pattern was marked in the recapture of Tikrit (2015) and Mosul (2016-17), and along the Euphrates Corridor west of Baghdad, especially in Fallujah and Ramadi.

European NATOs alacrity in stepping to the plate on this is inspiring. The Europeans offering to do it relieves the Biden administration of having to employ a large footprint of U.S. troops to accomplish it.

Of course, helping Iran gain territory in Iraq again by proxy does put the Iranian land-bridge vision back in play. Presumably this is considered a feature, not a bug.

Jens Stoltenberg avers that NATOs efforts will now include more Iraqi security institutions and areas beyond Baghdad, though their presence is conditions-based and increases in troop numbers will be incremental.

Yes. Given the relative dearth of ISIS presence in Iraq, the conditions in question are likely to be how thoroughly the pro-Iranian elements in the Iraqi government are able to enforce cooperation with an enterprise to hand Iraqi territory over to Irans effective control.

There are more forms of engagement than are dreamt of in our philosophy. With the out-of-profile NATO move in Iraq, the Biden administration is engaging Iran, as surely as if Kamala Harris had picked up the phone and called Hassan Rouhani. The signal: well give you Iraq, so come talk to us, at the EU-3s table, about what else youd like.

Last to the starting line

It need hardly be added, but shoot-all, Im going to add it anyway: Joe Bidens long-awaited phone call with Benjamin Netanyahu finally took place this past week. The EU-3/NATO gambit with Iran was clearly already lined up. The Biden-Netanyahu call was held on Wednesday 17 February, about 24 hours before the spate of news about U.S. sanctions policy and the NATO reaction to the rocket barrage on Erbil.

An attack of decorum may have put that sequence in the right order, at least. Another one didnt come off so well. Reports on 15 February, based on a disclosure from China, suggested that Bidens Iran envoy, Rob Malley (whom we know as the Hamas Whisperer), had spoken to the Chinese already about U.S. policy on Iran and the Iranian nuclear program. Afterward, when China announced this had happened (in a formal statement from the foreign ministry), the Biden administration declined to discuss it with the media.

We should not kid ourselves. It matters very much that Team Biden discussed and in some ways significantly rearranged policy on Iran with the EU-3 and China before Biden spoke to the prime minister of Israel. Realistic appraisals are essential here. Whats happening is a reset.

In more than passing, we should also note that this is of a piece with the Biden administrations decision to freeze the F-35 sale to UAE, and end U.S. support to Saudi Arabias efforts against the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen. Both of those decisions portend undermining the defensive capabilities of long-time partners in the region against an aggressive, radical Iran.

China, as predicted

There are too many things going on with China to catalogue all of them here. I will focus on just one.

A short while ago, we noted that China was adopting a new law permitting her maritime patrol ships a fleet with the status of a coast guard to fire on foreign vessels in the waters of disputed islands (i.e., the islands China has a claims dispute over), and to attack foreign infrastructure on those islands.

China passed that law, and the Biden administration publicly affirmed U.S. support for Japans claims on the disputed Senkaku Islands, near Taiwan, just before the coup took place in Burma/Myanmar. In the mix at the time, Chinese bomber aircraft ostentatiously communicated about targeting USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) as the carrier entered the South China Sea on 23 January 2021.

China has since wasted no time in beginning to probe the firmness of the Biden administrations intentions on the Senkakus.

On 6 February, Chinese maritime patrol ships entered the waters off the Senkaku Islands in pursuit of Japanese fishing vessels operating there. Nikkei Asia carried a Kyodo report that this was the eighth day in a row on which such Chinese ships had entered Senkaku waters, but this interaction appeared to be noteworthy because of the engagement with fishing vessels.

On 16 February, another report indicated that Chinese ships harassed Japanese vessels in the Senkakus, and this time one of the Chinese ships had an autocannon on the deck. I take that to mean a large-caliber machine gun not permanently mounted, which would be in keeping with the profile of Chinas gray-zone maritime patrol fleet. (Ships of several types function in this role, and they are all civilian-type hulls.)

China means to probe and harass Japan, of course. But as this escalates, it is clearly a test for the Biden administration as well.

Speaking of China

A final note. Emmanuel Macron has spoken to others besides Kamala Harris recently. In an interview with Financial Times, published on 18 February just before the G7 summit, Macron had this to say about NATO, and in particular its relevance and purpose:

I am a defender of European sovereignty, of strategic autonomy, not because Im against Nato or because I doubt our American friends, but because I am lucid on the state of the world, because I think we need a fair sharing of the burden and Europe cannot delegate its protection and the protection of its neighbourhood to the USA and so we have to do it together.

Nato still needed to be reinvented, he added. Nobody can tell me that todays Nato is a structure that, in its foundations, is still pertinent. It was founded to face down the Warsaw Pact. There is no more a Warsaw Pact.

Steven Erlanger, international affairs reporter for the New York Times, thought this odd.

NATO, Erlanger points out, was built to face down Moscow. And Moscow remains ambitious and nuclear.

NATO was formed six years before the Warsaw Pact, for those keeping track. So Macron was a bit poorly briefed in that exchange,

But on the larger point, I find Erlangers instincts good. Macrons assertion raises the question: if a nuclear-armed Russia is not an adversary worthy of being countered with a prepared alliance what is a nuclear-armed Russia? How do we define that entity as a geopolitical presence?

And that raises the possibly more urgent question: what is a nuclear-armed China?

On the Russia question theres at least a legacy framework to deviate from. The second question, we have yet to truly pursue in a systematic and corporate way. There is no bedrock alliance with a common view on it, save the treaty-bound U.S. and Japan, which largely agree on the matter.

China has been exploiting the heck out of that, from the Americas to Europe and back to the Middle East and South Asia. Xi Jinping doesnt look like slacking off any time soon.

And that thought-experiment brings us to the third obvious question the one that, surprisingly, may matter the most. If France is not an enthusiastic, committed member of NATO, what, then, is a nuclear-armed France?

Oh, Im well aware of the history of France as a nuclear power, with her force de frappe and her carefully preserved national prerogatives within NATO. But that thinking is from 50-60 years ago, when there was no question what we thought the USSR was, and no question that NATO was the essential project of a Europe with a common purpose.

And that context is no longer what were talking about. Even the most committed proponents of NATO know that.

One of Erlangers Twitter correspondents posted an interesting map depicting his concept of a sort of rump NATO, comprising the European nations that still see a threat from Moscow.

Without, as always, meaning to pick on him, the immediate thought in my mind is that if Im China looking at that map or Russia, for that matter defining what a nuclear-armed, free-radical France is would shoot to the very top of my to-do list, if the map got even close to becoming reality.

Might it? I recommend not dismissing what a French president says on the record, as if it doesnt matter.

Interesting times. Its a good thing we have Kamala Harris manning (womanning?) the phones.

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The rest is here:
Iran, Israel, China, NATO: High-speed foreign policy; or, manning the phones in interesting times - Liberty Unyielding