The Russians and the Iranian base

The Russians and the Iranian base
The confusion that accompanied the announcement of an agreement under which Iran granted Russia use of a military air base in Hamadan is unworthy of serious discussion, writes Abdulrahman al-Rashed in Asharq Al-Awsat, adding that news agencies are preoccupied with the news and some have reported that the Iranian parliament opposed the agreement and hampered it, while the parliament in Iran is not able to hinder such agreements, and this claim is simply nonsensical.

“Those who are aware of the real hierarchy of decision making in Iran know very well that major decisions are above the parliament’s authority and that the only person who is able to obstruct them is Ayatollah Khamenei,” al-Rashed argues. 

“Iran’s parliament, just like most parliaments in the Middle East, is just part of the political decor. The secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani who is also responsible for relations with Russia only apologised for his remarks which underestimated the significance of parliament’s objection because he embarrassed the political system by telling the truth.

“After the speaker of parliament highlighted the ‘ethics of governance,’ Shamkhani corrected himself and said he did not mean to insult the legislative council. The controversy is just a storm in a teacup, and it was not parliament who impeded the strategic agreement with Moscow.

“If we assume that the Russians no longer use the base, what happened? Iran’s parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani said that Russia stopped using the Hamadan base and ended its military activities above Iranian soil. This story is easy to prove or disprove because the Americans monitor the Hamadan base and will publish pictures of Russian bombers if they find them there during the next few weeks, just like they did when Moscow announced that it had withdrawn most of its air force in Syria, and it turned out that it had increased its presence instead,” al-Rashed goes on to say.

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