Any countries that normalize ties with Israel are “betting on a losing horse,” Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Tuesday in a speech that is clearly a new campaign against Mideast normalization with Israel.
Iran’s closest ally and proxy, Hezbollah, is sounding the same tune: Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, in a speech on Monday, delivered the message that any countries normalizing ties with Israel should be condemned.
The speeches came just as Iran began a new drill this week, involving hundreds of drones, according to Iranian media. They also came in the wake of a controversy involving Iran and Saudi Arabia over a soccer match, where Iran displayed a bust of late Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Qassem Soleimani.
This showcases Tehran’s alarming moves toward normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel. It can no longer ignore the numerous press reports and references to this trend in various media in the region and the West.
For instance, Beirut-based, pro-Iranian news channel Al Mayadeen on Tuesday reported about the number of Israeli cabinet ministers who have visited Saudi Arabia in recent weeks.
What Iran may do next is use its message discipline in the region to threaten normalization. Nasrallah has said the Muslim world must confront normalization from mosques, lamenting that instead, many people across the region are hearing about the “willingness for normalization.”
Iran and Hezbollah
Nasrallah and the ayatollah are on the same page because Iran is quite good at controlling the narrative it puts out, using both its media and its proxies to conduct a full-court press. It could even operationalize other proxies, such as Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or the Houthis in Yemen.
The concern now in Tehran is that it has not been able to push its agenda as much as it would like. Earlier this year, it was able to obtain reconciliation with Riyadh via a China-brokered deal, and it later got the Assad regime to come in from the cold via reintegration with the Arab League.
This all looked like positive news to Tehran, possibly opening the door to concessions from Washington. But since then, it has seen many of these pawn-like movements on the chessboard of the region face hurdles.
Saudi Arabia has its own interests in reconciliation with Iran. But Riyadh also has its own independent foreign policy, and Saudi Arabia pursues its own interests on its own time; they run both together and independently.
This means Tehran may have miscalculated what it could get out of the moves it made over the past year. Reports about its strategy in Syria, trying to use Hezbollah to help arm Arab tribes to challenge the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces in exchange for also getting something from Russia, show Iran flailing about for a new policy.
Tehran fully knows it now faces an uphill struggle against the momentum toward normalization. It will attempt to destabilize various arenas in an effort to get the ball back in its court.