Japan’s Abe hopes visit will ease Us-iran tension
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s trip to Tehran represents the highest-level effort yet to de-escalate tensions between the United States and Iran as the country appears poised to break the 2015 nuclear deal it struck with world powers that America earlier abandoned.
Though Abe’s trip to Iran marks the first visit of a sitting Japanese premier in the 40 years since the Islamic Revolution, it remains unclear if Abe will go home with any success.
Iran is threatening to resume enriching uranium closer to weapons-grade level on July 7 if European allies fail to offer it new terms. President Donald Trump says he wants to talk to Tehran, but the U.S. has piled on sanctions that have seen Iran’s rial currency plummet along with its crucial oil exports.
The U.S. also has sent an aircraft carrier and B-52 bombers to the region, along with hundreds more troops to back up the tens of thousands already deployed across the Middle East. The U.S. blames Iran for a mysterious attack on oil tankers off the coast of the United Arab Emirates, and Iranian-backed rebels in Yemen continue to launch coordinated drone attacks on Saudi Arabia.
The stakes, analysts say, couldn’t be higher.
“Just going to Iran doesn’t resolve any problem,” said Kazuo Takahashi, an Open University of Japan professor of international politics and expert on the Middle East. “He would have to help open a path of dialogue between the U.S. and Iran, and that could be a major risk.”
Iran’s nuclear deal, agreed to at the time by China, Russia, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the U.S., saw Tehran agree to limit its enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of crippling sanctions. Western powers feared Iran’s atomic program could allow it to build nuclear weapons, although Iran long has insisted its program was for peaceful purposes.
In withdrawing from the deal last year, Trump pointed to the accord not limiting Iran’s ballistic missile program and not addressing what American officials describe as Tehran’s malign influence across the wider Mideast. Those who struck the deal at the time described it as a building block toward further negotiations with Iran, whose Islamic government has had a tense relationship with America since the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and subsequent hostage crisis.
Trump spoke Tuesday with Abe, said Yoshihide Suga, Japan’s chief Cabinet secretary. Suga declined to give any details about what they discussed. Abe also in recent days has spoken with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, all of whom are fierce critics of Iran.
Middle East peace is a must for Japan, which gets most of the oil fueling its economy from there. Japan had once purchased Iranian oil, but it has now stopped because of American sanctions. Recent threats from Iran to close off the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth through which a third of all oil traded by sea passes, has raised concerns.
Abe is scheduled to see Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate within Iran’s Shiite theocracy, as well as Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.