MESOP : To Obama’s Surprise U.S.-Iran talks risk deepening fears that Western relations may crash

An official visit to Turkey by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani triggered a flurry of diplomatic statements and economic agreements celebrated by both sides on Monday, announcements that were read by observers as straightforward evidence that relations between the two sometimes rivals were on the upswing.

Turkey’s office of the presidency issued a press release – and linked to it from the office’s official Twitter account for good measure – declaring that “Rouhani’s visit will open a new chapter in our bilateral relations.” The mostly Persian-language Twitter account thought to speak for Rouhani boasted that “Turkish and Iranian presidents signed 10 documents of cooperation” during the visit.

Ankara has come under increasingly public criticism from Washington over literally years of sanctions-busting transactions with Iran, and the Washington Free Beacon quoted Jonathan Schanzer – vice president of research at the Foundation of Defense of Democracies (FDD) – explicitly contextualizing Monday’s events as coming amid “massive sanctions busting facilitated by Turkey on behalf of Iran…. some $12 billion in oil sales… followed up by revelations of sanctions busting on the part of Iranian businessmen in Turkey to the tune of 87 billion [Euro].” Relations between Ankara and Tehran have in recent years been complicated as each sought to maneuver within and across three regional blocs – a camp of Washington’s traditional Arab and Israeli allies, an Iranian-dominated Shiite crescent, and a Turkish/Muslim Brotherhood/Qatari axis – but Schanzer told Bloomberg that “there appears to be far more drawing these two neighbors together than driving them apart… [t]his, of course, raises questions about Turkey’s reliability as a U.S. ally and as a NATO ally.” Reuters was a little more terse in conveying the same dynamic, publishing its article under the headline “Iran, Turkey pledge cooperation despite split over Syria.” Merve Tahiroglu and Behnam Taleblu – respectively a research associate and an Iran research analyst at FDD – assessed that “Iran appears intent to peel Turkey away from the Western block.”