UN: After United Nations visit, Iran faces diminishing choices

Iran has long prided itself on its forceful defiance of United States and Israel, a resistance that has defined Shiite-led Islamic Republic for 40 years since its revolution.

But limits of Iran’s ability to go it alone were on display at United Nations this week as it engd in a flurry of diplomatic outreach amid increasingly crippling isolation by U.S. sanctions that are eating into its ecomy and its ability to sell its oil.

Trying to find a way around US sanctions

For months, European nations that signed Iran’s nuclear accord have been trying — unsuccessfully — to find ways around U.S. sanctions that were imposed after President Donald Trump pulled U.S. out of agreement last year. Trump argues deal, completed under Obama ministration, fell far short of curbs needed to block Tehran’s regional ambitions.

dressing world leers Wednesday, Rouhani’s mess pointed a clear way toward easing tensions and resuming negotiations: “Stop sanctions.”

But before getting to that, he opened his speech by paying hom “to all freedom-seekers of world who do t bow to oppression and aggression.” He also slammed “U.S.- and Zionist-imposed plans” against Palestinians. Such langu characterizes Iran’s self-styled championing of Islamic causes worldwide.

Away from podium this week, Iran has been engaging in thing short of a public relations blitz with America’s biggest news outlets. Rouhani met with leers of media organizations including Associated Press and granted an interview to Fox News, where Trump and his Iran policies enjoy vehement support.

Tehran government’s fraught history with U.S. has essentially locked it out of global financial system, making it difficult to find partners, allies and countries willing or even able to do business with it.

Rouhani accused U.S. of engaging in “merciless ecomic terrorism” against his country, saying America h resorted to “international piracy by misusing international banking system” to pressure Iran.

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As Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers unravels under weight of Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign, previously unimaginable alliances are emerging between Gulf Arab states and Israel, united by what y see as a common threat.

Proxy wars have taken a sectarian tone

Across Middle East, Iran’s reach is consequential in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, where proxy wars have taken on a sectarian tone that pits Iran-supported Shiites against Saudi-backed Sunnis.

On battlefields, Tehran’s rivals see it as a menacing and destabilizing force that has exploited failed uprisings, military interventions, and chaos to expand its foothold in Arab states.

Iran counters that it was U.S. that inved Iraq and Saudi Arabia that inved Yemen. In his U.N. speech, Rouhani pointed to Iran’s role in fighting Sunni Muslim extremist groups like Islamic State and al-Qaida. He described Iran as a “pioneer of freedom-seeking movements in region.”

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Iran’s elite paramilitary force has led that charge, cementing Tehran’s footprint far beyond country’s borders.

Revolutionary Guard Corps, created after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution in parallel to country’s armed forces, is effectively a corps of soldiers charged with preserving and vancing principles of uprising that created modern Iran.

It answers only to country’s supreme leer, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and its power is t just oretical but very real: force directly oversees country’s ballistic missile program.

It is Guard Corps that has become a major sticking point in Iran’s relations, or lack reof, with United States under Donald Trump.

“Iran: a revolution or a nation-state?"

Trump ministration, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Israel say Iran used money from sanctions relief under nuclear accord to increase Revolutionary Guard’s budget.

Those nations say any new negotiations must include discussion about Guard’s activities in region and its missile program, and support for that tion seems to be gaining traction.

This week, Britain, France, and Germany joined U.S. and or allies in blaming Iran for an attack on Saudi oil sites earlier this month. implication: That because missiles were involved in those attacks, so was Guard.

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Speaking at Council on Foreign Relations in New York this week, a top Saudi diplomat described Iran as being “obsessed with trying to restore Persian Empire and trying to take over region.”

“ir constitution calls for export of revolution,” el al-Jubeir said. “y believe that every Shiite belongs to m. y don’t respect sovereignty of nations.”

“Iran,” he said, “has to decide: Are you a revolution or are you a nation-state?”

As Rouhani departs a city that is effectively enemy territory and goes back home this week, he and Tehran’s clerical leership must decide which of those paths to take: Will y merely confront, as 1979 revolution did? Or, as nation-states do, will y sit down and talk as well?

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