Javad Zarif: The Hottest Ticket in London

 

In the British foreign policy world, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif is a celebrity, almost a rock star. When Chatham House, Britain’s leading foreign affairs think, announced Zarif would speak at one of its members’ events on February 4^th, there was no way it could meet demand. Those wishing to hear Zarif in person had to enter a ballot and hope to win a seat. Your correspondent, although not one of the chosen few, happened to be reading in the Chatham House library that day, and saw police sweep the building with a sniffer dog and what appeared to be other means of bomb-detection. Outside, in the upscale St. James’s neighborhood, police and police vans filled the streets on a scale almost unprecedented for a Chatham House event.

Chatham House, otherwise known as the Royal Institute of International Affairs, is a non-governmental organization steeped in British foreign policy history. The building it occupies has been home at various times to British prime ministers William Pitt the Elder, Edward Stanley and William Gladstone. The institute was first conceived by British and American delegates to the 1919 Paris Peace Conference that followed the First World War. It now regularly hosts lectures by high-level government officials from around the world, but appearances by Islamic Republic officials have been rare. A portrait of former president Mohammad Khatami, who spoke there in 2006, hangs like a prize in the building’s reception room. 

So what does Zarif want from an audience full of Britain’s foreign policy-watchers and foreign policy heavyweights? His appearance accompanies British-Iranian rapprochement following last year’s nuclear deal, and a mending of diplomatic fences after the storming of the British Embassy in Tehran in 2011. Catching up with audio recorded at the event, it becomes clear just how heavily Iran’s regional cold war with Saudi Arabia weighs upon Zarif’s mind, and how much he wants Britain to see Iran’s side in the quarrel. Speaking on a stage beside former British Ambassador to Iran Sir Richard Dalton, Zarif emphasized how Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear deal symbolized its abandonment of “zero-sum” disputes, and how much he would like the Saudis abandon them too.

At a time when Saudi Arabia is up against increasingly unsympathetic public opinion in the United Kingdom, and when Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn frequently criticizes Britain’s close ties with Saudi Arabia, Zarif is keen to present Iran as the reasonable party in the Persian Gulf. Zarif criticized Saudi Arabia’s “senseless bombardment” of Yemen (where Saudi Arabia believes Iran supports Houthi rebels) and asked his audience in a gentle monotone, “Is it possible to look at it from a non-zero-sum perspective? [...] We believe that our interest in the region is not contradictory to the interests of other regional powers, I mean Saudi Arabia.”

Zarif pointed to the scourge of the Sunni extremist group ISIS as a common threat could unite Iran with its neighbors, and also pointed to more banal common interests such as the free flow of oil and freedom of navigation in the Persian Gulf. He defended Iran’s response to the siege of the Saudi embassy in Tehran last month, noting that security officials had been fired as a result, and that President Rouhani had condemned the attack. Asked by a journalist if he could see a time when Iran and Saudi Arabia would collaborate, he replied, “Tomorrow, if they are ready! We didn’t break diplomatic relations! I am saying it with every possible intention [...] We are ready to engage with all our neighbors in the Persian Gulf for security in the region starting tomorrow.”

Asked about his communications with his Saudi counterparts, Zarif confessed they were still scant. And while Zarif clearly has many fans in London, his British audience should not underestimate Iran’s outsized faith in Britain’s influence in the Middle East. Chatham House has long featured in the fantasies of those who believe Britain’s global role shrewd to the point of being uncanny. Indeed, in view of the popularity of such theories in Iran, Zarif may even have stuck his neck out slightly by appearing there. Zarif’s appeal to Chatham House members suggests a fear that the Iran-Saudi split has gone much, much too far, along, perhaps, with his hope that London can convince the Saudis to warm to his celebrity.