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Iran Nuclear Deal Threatened by Russian Demands Over Ukraine Sanctions
Iran Nuclear Deal Threatened by Russian Demands Over Ukraine Sanctions
Western and Iranian officials have said they were very close to reaching a deal to restore the nuclear pact
Laurence NormanUpdated March 6, 2022 12:00 pm ET
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov demanded guarantees that could introduce major loopholes in the tight sanctions.
Photo: Sergei Ilnitsky/Associated Press
Fresh demands from Russia threatened to derail talks to restore the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, as Moscow said it wanted written guarantees that Ukraine-related sanctions won’t prevent it from trading broadly with Tehran under a revived pact.
The demands, made by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Saturday and dismissed by U.S. officials on Sunday, came as Western and Iranian officials said they were near to reaching a deal to restore the nuclear pact, which lifted most international sanctions on Iran in exchange for tight but temporary restrictions on Tehran’s nuclear programs.
The U.S. left the agreement in May 2018, and Iran has since mid-2019 massively expanded its nuclear work. The Vienna talks focus on the exact steps that Tehran and Washington would need to take to return into compliance with the deal.
Western officials said they wanted a deal on the nuclear file in place this week. Chief negotiators from European powers left Vienna to return to their capitals Friday as they waited for Iran and the U.S. to try to solve the final differences between them. These included precisely which sanctions Washington would lift and the exact sequence of steps the U.S. and Iran would take to return into compliance with the 2015 deal.
The 10-Point.
A personal, guided tour to the best scoops and stories every day in The Wall Street Journal.
“We’ve made real progress in recent weeks…and I think we’re close, but there are a couple of very challenging remaining issues and nothing’s done until everything’s done,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on CBS ’ Face the Nation program on Sunday.
Advances in Iran’s nuclear work mean Western officials have warned that it could very soon be impossible to restore the 2015 nuclear deal because it would no longer be possible to re-create the central benefit for the U.S. and Europe of that agreement—keeping Iran months away from being able to amass enough nuclear fuel for one nuclear weapon.
A confidential report from the United Nations atomic agency circulated Thursday showed that Iran had now produced 33.2 kilograms of highly enriched uranium, around three-quarters of what it would need to have enough weapon-grade 90% fuel for a nuclear weapon. Experts say it would take Iran just a few weeks to amass enough weapons grade nuclear fuel.
It was always understood by Western officials that Russia’s specific role within the 2015 nuclear deal would need to be protected from sanctions. That includes receiving enriched uranium from Iran and exchanging it for yellowcake, Russia’s work to turn Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility into a research center and other nuclear-specific deliveries to Tehran’s facilities.
However, Mr. Lavrov appeared to demand far more sweeping guarantees that could introduce major loopholes in the tight financial, economic and energy sanctions the West has imposed in recent days because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“We have asked for a written guarantee…that the current process triggered by the United States does not in any way damage our right to free and full trade, economic and investment cooperation and military-technical cooperation with the Islamic State,” Mr. Lavrov said.
Soon after Mr. Lavrov’s comments, Russia’s chief negotiator at the nuclear talks, Mikhail Ulyanov, tweeted that he had raised questions that needed tackling with a senior European official “to ensure smooth civil nuclear cooperation with Iran.” That suggested Russia’s real demands at the talks were narrower than Mr. Lavrov had suggested.
Mr. Blinken told CBS that the western sanctions on Russia “have nothing to do with…the Iranian nuclear deal.”
“These things are totally different and are just are not in any way linked together, so I think that’s- that’s irrelevant,” he said Sunday.
The Iranian delegation in Vienna said this weekend they were awaiting clarification from Moscow.
A Western diplomat said that if the guarantees are purely about the work Russia would do in Iran under a restored nuclear deal, “that can be managed.”
“But if Lavrov is using this as a play to try to carve a huge hole out of the overall Ukraine sanctions, that’s a different story,” the person said.
An Iranian official said his delegation was awaiting clarification from Moscow.
Either way, the Russian demands now look set to kick talks into next week, two Western diplomats said.
“In my view, a deal is still more likely than not. Critically, both Washington and Tehran want to get this done,” said Henry Rome, a director covering global macro politics and Iran at Eurasia Group. “Russia throwing sand in the gears may actually bring these two adversaries together to reach creative solutions to get the deal signed.”
Since talks began last April, Iran has refused to negotiate directly with the U.S. Instead, the other parties to the agreement—Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China and the European Union—have served as intermediaries.
Russia had played a generally constructive role in the talks, Western diplomats have said, at times pulling Iran back from unreasonable demands and pressing Tehran—publicly at times—not to drag the talks out too long.
However, senior Western officials said that over the last few days, with the Ukraine conflict in the background, Russian officials at the talks had been more hesitant, telling their counterparts they needed to check new ideas with Moscow.
While the talks in Vienna appeared to stall again, one potential hurdle to reviving the nuclear deal might have been removed Saturday following a trip to Tehran by Rafael Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Mr. Grossi went to Tehran to seek an agreement about the handling of a probe the agency has been doing for three years now into undeclared nuclear material found in Iran. Tehran has been stalling on the investigation and had pushed in Vienna for the files to be closed as part of restoring the nuclear deal, something the agency and Western officials refused.
A joint statement said that the IAEA would aim to present a conclusion on the probe to its Board in June if Iran cooperated. However Mr. Grossi said Saturday evening when he returned to Vienna that a report could leave questions open which the agency would need to keep pursuing.
“You may come to the conclusion that what you have is not enough and more is needed,” he told reporters.
Write to Laurence Norman at laurence.norman@wsj.com
Iran Nuclear Deal Threatened by Russian Demands Over Ukraine Sanctions
Western and Iranian officials have said they were very close to reaching a deal to restore the nuclear pact
Laurence NormanUpdated March 6, 2022 12:00 pm ET
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov demanded guarantees that could introduce major loopholes in the tight sanctions.
Photo: Sergei Ilnitsky/Associated Press
Fresh demands from Russia threatened to derail talks to restore the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, as Moscow said it wanted written guarantees that Ukraine-related sanctions won’t prevent it from trading broadly with Tehran under a revived pact.
The demands, made by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Saturday and dismissed by U.S. officials on Sunday, came as Western and Iranian officials said they were near to reaching a deal to restore the nuclear pact, which lifted most international sanctions on Iran in exchange for tight but temporary restrictions on Tehran’s nuclear programs.
The U.S. left the agreement in May 2018, and Iran has since mid-2019 massively expanded its nuclear work. The Vienna talks focus on the exact steps that Tehran and Washington would need to take to return into compliance with the deal.
Western officials said they wanted a deal on the nuclear file in place this week. Chief negotiators from European powers left Vienna to return to their capitals Friday as they waited for Iran and the U.S. to try to solve the final differences between them. These included precisely which sanctions Washington would lift and the exact sequence of steps the U.S. and Iran would take to return into compliance with the 2015 deal.
The 10-Point.
A personal, guided tour to the best scoops and stories every day in The Wall Street Journal.
“We’ve made real progress in recent weeks…and I think we’re close, but there are a couple of very challenging remaining issues and nothing’s done until everything’s done,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on CBS ’ Face the Nation program on Sunday.
Advances in Iran’s nuclear work mean Western officials have warned that it could very soon be impossible to restore the 2015 nuclear deal because it would no longer be possible to re-create the central benefit for the U.S. and Europe of that agreement—keeping Iran months away from being able to amass enough nuclear fuel for one nuclear weapon.
A confidential report from the United Nations atomic agency circulated Thursday showed that Iran had now produced 33.2 kilograms of highly enriched uranium, around three-quarters of what it would need to have enough weapon-grade 90% fuel for a nuclear weapon. Experts say it would take Iran just a few weeks to amass enough weapons grade nuclear fuel.
It was always understood by Western officials that Russia’s specific role within the 2015 nuclear deal would need to be protected from sanctions. That includes receiving enriched uranium from Iran and exchanging it for yellowcake, Russia’s work to turn Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility into a research center and other nuclear-specific deliveries to Tehran’s facilities.
However, Mr. Lavrov appeared to demand far more sweeping guarantees that could introduce major loopholes in the tight financial, economic and energy sanctions the West has imposed in recent days because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“We have asked for a written guarantee…that the current process triggered by the United States does not in any way damage our right to free and full trade, economic and investment cooperation and military-technical cooperation with the Islamic State,” Mr. Lavrov said.
Soon after Mr. Lavrov’s comments, Russia’s chief negotiator at the nuclear talks, Mikhail Ulyanov, tweeted that he had raised questions that needed tackling with a senior European official “to ensure smooth civil nuclear cooperation with Iran.” That suggested Russia’s real demands at the talks were narrower than Mr. Lavrov had suggested.
Mr. Blinken told CBS that the western sanctions on Russia “have nothing to do with…the Iranian nuclear deal.”
“These things are totally different and are just are not in any way linked together, so I think that’s- that’s irrelevant,” he said Sunday.
The Iranian delegation in Vienna said this weekend they were awaiting clarification from Moscow.
A Western diplomat said that if the guarantees are purely about the work Russia would do in Iran under a restored nuclear deal, “that can be managed.”
“But if Lavrov is using this as a play to try to carve a huge hole out of the overall Ukraine sanctions, that’s a different story,” the person said.
An Iranian official said his delegation was awaiting clarification from Moscow.
Either way, the Russian demands now look set to kick talks into next week, two Western diplomats said.
“In my view, a deal is still more likely than not. Critically, both Washington and Tehran want to get this done,” said Henry Rome, a director covering global macro politics and Iran at Eurasia Group. “Russia throwing sand in the gears may actually bring these two adversaries together to reach creative solutions to get the deal signed.”
Since talks began last April, Iran has refused to negotiate directly with the U.S. Instead, the other parties to the agreement—Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China and the European Union—have served as intermediaries.
Russia had played a generally constructive role in the talks, Western diplomats have said, at times pulling Iran back from unreasonable demands and pressing Tehran—publicly at times—not to drag the talks out too long.
However, senior Western officials said that over the last few days, with the Ukraine conflict in the background, Russian officials at the talks had been more hesitant, telling their counterparts they needed to check new ideas with Moscow.
While the talks in Vienna appeared to stall again, one potential hurdle to reviving the nuclear deal might have been removed Saturday following a trip to Tehran by Rafael Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Mr. Grossi went to Tehran to seek an agreement about the handling of a probe the agency has been doing for three years now into undeclared nuclear material found in Iran. Tehran has been stalling on the investigation and had pushed in Vienna for the files to be closed as part of restoring the nuclear deal, something the agency and Western officials refused.
A joint statement said that the IAEA would aim to present a conclusion on the probe to its Board in June if Iran cooperated. However Mr. Grossi said Saturday evening when he returned to Vienna that a report could leave questions open which the agency would need to keep pursuing.
“You may come to the conclusion that what you have is not enough and more is needed,” he told reporters.
Write to Laurence Norman at laurence.norman@wsj.com
washingtonexaminer.com
Restoring America
Tom Rogan
7-8 minutes
EXCLUSIVE — At least two Iranians belonging to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards’ covert-action Quds Force have been plotting to assassinate former national security adviser John Bolton, according to a Justice Department official with direct knowledge of the investigation.
The source tells the Washington Examiner that the department possesses indictable evidence against the Iranians but that Biden administration officials are resisting publicly indicting the men for fear that it could derail their drive for a nuclear deal with Iran, currently nearing completion in negotiations in Vienna, Austria. Biden’s hope is to resume the 2015 JCPOA Iran nuclear accord. Former President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the accord, and Iran suspended its compliance.
It is possible but unlikely that there are sealed indictments against the men, but the DOJ source said the seriousness of the conspiracy and the evidence warranted public indictment without delay. Sealed indictments would be unusual and probably unnecessary in this case, as they are usually used to prevent the target evading justice. The Quds Force is fully aware of U.S. law enforcement and intelligence attention toward it, so its members are unlikely to put themselves in a position to be arrested with or without a sealed indictment.
The Washington Examiner is withholding some details of the plot against Bolton for national security reasons, but the DOJ source described it in highly specific terms as supported by significant Revolutionary Guard reconnaissance activity and involved an effort to recruit an assassin on U.S. soil. A Justice Department official told the Washington Examiner that "it would be categorically false to claim that these kinds of policy considerations would drive such a charging decision."
The intelligence community became aware of the plot at an early stage, and it prompted high-level concern and a full-time Secret Service protective detail being assigned to Bolton earlier this year or late in 2021. Significant FBI assets were also deployed to disrupt the plot and assist in protecting Bolton. The plot is also believed to have precipitated national security adviser Jake Sullivan's Jan. 9 warning to Iran that the U.S. would protect officials "serving the United States now and those who formerly served."
Similar Iranian threats have been made and continue to be made against former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other former Trump administration officials who worked on Iran issues. As the Washington Examiner reported in December 2020, Congress quietly extended Pompeo's Diplomatic Security Service protective detail beyond his government tenure in response to these Iranian threats. That protective detail continues and has a high level of enhanced capability.
As Forbes reported on Jan. 28, the deployment of a Secret Service presence in Bolton's D.C. suburban neighborhood sparked attention from his neighbors. Bolton still has a Secret Service detail. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, four active and former government officials with knowledge of the most recent intelligence backdrop confirmed that Iranian threats against Bolton and Pompeo are continuing, specific, and highly credible.
The Justice Department source said prosecutors, FBI agents, and intelligence community personnel involved in disrupting the plot against Bolton are frustrated and angry that there have been no indictments and suspect political foot-dragging. The official added that Bolton and Pompeo were asked to sign nondisclosure agreements in return for their being briefed on classified intelligence related to the threats against them. Bolton and Pompeo declined to comment for this story.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards particularly despise Bolton and Pompeo, who they see as leading President Donald Trump's "maximum pressure" sanctions strategy against Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's regime. But the primary motive for the plots against them is believed to be rooted in Iran's desire to avenge the January 2020 U.S. drone assassination of Quds Force's commander, Qassem Soleimani.
Numerous active and former government officials have told the Washington Examiner that the Quds Force's current commander, Esmail Qaani, is believed to have been tasked by Khamenei with avenging Soleimani with the high-profile assassination of a U.S. official. Taking theological root in the martyrdom of Husayn ibn Ali at the 7th-century Battle of Karbala, the Revolutionary Guard force has a fetish for revenge. One government source suggested that Iran's MOIS civilian intelligence service is also involved in the assassination plots.
The talks in Vienna about reviving the nuclear deal or coming up with a new one cast a shadow over the Biden administration’s response to the assassination plots.
A restored agreement involving Iran, the U.S., and the five other original JCPOA parties is expected imminently. Numerous media reports suggest that Iranian negotiators have pushed hard for the Biden administration to remove the Trump administration's sanctions designation of the Revolutionary Guards and associated parties as terrorist entities. That designation has complicated the guard’s ability to attract foreign investment for its extensive domestic economic interests.
Biden administration officials appear to fear that indicting Quds Force officers for assassination plots in the U.S. would complicate their diplomatic efforts. Such thinking would be similar to the Obama administration's response to a disrupted 2011 Quds Force plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador as he dined at Cafe Milano in the Georgetown district of Washington, D.C. While intelligence community and military personnel such as then-Central Command commanding Gen. Jim Mattis pushed for a stronger response to that plot, including against its ringleader, Soleimani, the Obama administration settled for indicting relatively low-ranking Iranian officials.
The attempted assassination of U.S. persons in America by a foreign power constitutes an act of war. Alongside existing Republican concerns over the nuclear deal, the Biden administration is likely to face hard questions from Congress should it restore the agreement with concessions to the guard force.
A Department of Justice spokesman said, "As a matter of Department policy, we do not confirm or deny non-public law enforcement activity. In every case, the Department’s decision whether to charge would be made based on the facts and law and in accordance with the principles of federal prosecution." The National Security Council did not respond to requests for comment. The Secret Service stated that "in order to maintain operational security, the Secret Service does not discuss our protectees or the means and methods used to conduct our protective operations."
@88m3 @dtownreppin214
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I’m no Mossad spy, says Jewish journalist who interviewed Raisi, worked for Iran TV
I’m no Mossad spy, says Jewish journalist who interviewed Raisi, worked for Iran TV
Catherine Perez-Shakdam ignites a media firestorm in Iran after publishing a ToI blog post; she appeared in Iranian state media for years before reconnecting with her Jewish roots
By Aaron BoxermanToday, 2:15 pm
On the eve of Iran’s 2017 presidential election, Ebrahim Raisi, who would become president in 2021, sat down to give an interview to the Russia Today news outlet. His interlocutor was a French citizen, Catherine Perez-Shakdam, then a practicing Shi’a Muslim.
The veiled, religiously observant Perez-Shakdam had become a regular figure in Iranian state media, giving favorable coverage to the regime and its proxies around the region. She wrote dozens of articles in English in the Iranian press and rubbed shoulders with some of the Middle East’s most notorious figures.
“Zionists are planning to annihilate Islam,” trumpeted the headline of one 2014 piece she wrote for the Iranian state mouthpiece. In the article, she vilified religious Israelis ascending to pray at the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site, as “rabid dogs.”
What Raisi likely did not know at the time was that Perez-Shakdam had been born to a Jewish family. Five years after her interview with the Iranian leader, Perez-Shakdam has become an atheist and reconnected with her long-discarded Jewish identity.
“It started to dawn on me that for years I had played into the hands of the very people who want us gone… For years, I was motivated by a kind of self-hate. But you realize that you can’t deny who you are,” Perez-Shakdam told The Times of Israel in an interview.
Perez-Shakdam wrote three posts on the Times of Israel’s blog platform in November, the third of which described her interview with Raisi. It went largely unnoticed for three months, but in recent days has started to make headlines in Persian and Arabic media, causing a social media firestorm even amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Iranian media quickly declared her an Israeli Mossad spy, and broadcasters who had been spotted with her were forced to issue clarifications.
Iranian chief cleric Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s office quickly disavowed any connection with her. Many of her media appearances and articles were wiped from state websites, although archived versions of some can still be found.
Catherine Perez-Shakdam, a French citizen of Jewish heritage (second from left) sits at a conference in Tehran in February 2017 (courtesy)
Perez-Shakdam dismisses the espionage allegations as nonsense. “I’m used to it. When they don’t like what you have to say, they come for your character — although I didn’t expect it to become quite this kind of circus,” she said.
“The only thing that really irks them is that they woke up to the fact that I’m Jewish after they let me into the circle, now that they realize that I’m the enemy — or what they perceive as the enemy,” she said.
‘I never spoke about my heritage ever’
For Perez-Shakdam, who now resides in London with her two children, the current media attention has been another step in a winding, complex life story.
Born in Paris to Jewish parents who fled Nazi persecution, Perez-Shakdam converted to Islam and spent years as a journalist and commentator in the Middle East.
“I was raised very, very secular. It wasn’t that I was cut out of the Jewish community, but I had no sense of religious belonging. I never grew up with a sense of Jewish identity,” she said.
At first, Perez-Shakdam wrote, from the UK and from Yemen, for international publications. But as her career went on, she appeared mostly as a talking head on Iranian state media. She presented Iran’s talking points to the world, but stresses she now holds very different views.
“I was really in the club. I was on television all the time. I think I’ve written for every media outlet they have, and I met quite a few people,” Perez-Shakdam said with a chuckle during her Zoom interview with The Times of Israel. “To have a Jew be featured on Press TV — the mouthpiece of the regime — bothers them.”
Catherine Perez-Shakdam speaks to The Times of Israel from London via Zoom on March 7, 2022 (Screenshot)
In 1999, as a young student at the London School of Economics, Perez-Shakdam had met her future husband, a Sunni Muslim from Sana’a in Yemen. They were married six months later. Although Perez-Shakdam converted to Islam, her Jewish background was a source of friction with her in-laws and eventually became a source of shame for her, she said.
“I never spoke about my heritage ever, because I knew that if I mentioned it, I would get bullied into silence. So I just stopped mentioning it,” Perez-Shakdam said.
While her husband was a Sunni Muslim, Perez-Shakdam found herself drawn to Islam’s second main branch, Shi’ism. Shi’ite Muslims revere a separate set of Islamic leaders — the prophet Mohammad’s son-in-law Ali and his descendants.
A strong theme of sacrifice resonates through the Shi’ite religious tradition, often centering around the figure of Hussein, Mohammad’s grandson. Hussein was killed alongside his brother Hassan by Sunni leaders at the battle of Karbala during the factional struggle in early Islam.
Every year, millions of Shi’a gather in Iraq to observe the Arba’een march. The worshippers walk to Karbala to mark the anniversary of Hussein’s martyrdom, sometimes traveling long distances on foot.
“It’s 20 million people walking, not because they have to, not out of religious duty, but out of love for this one imam that means everything to them,” Perez-Shakdam says, her voice filled with religious devotion, in a video filmed during one of the pilgrimages.
It was after her divorce, in 2014, that Perez-Shakdam got involved in Iranian media. “It snowballed really quickly. Iran is so starved for Western support that they’ll talk to anyone with a Western passport,” she said.
Even at the time, she said, she was aware that Iranian media was attempting to draft her into a “propaganda machine.”
“To a certain extent, I played along,” she said, although she said she was never compensated for her articles.
Hearing Khamenei in Tehran
In 2017, Perez-Shakdam took a trip to a mass conference on the Palestinian cause in Tehran — one of about five trips she made to Iran. She moved around apparently unhindered: by that point, she’d already been vetted by the regime, she said.
Khamenei opened the conference with a fiery diatribe condemning Israel as a “cancerous tumor.” The leader — the most powerful man in Iran — vowed that Tehran would never stop supporting Hamas and Hezbollah, to whom he attributed the successes of the Palestinian national movement.
Hamas terror chief Khaled Mashal was in attendance, as was top Iranian general Qasim Soleimani, who would be assassinated in 2020 by the United States in a drone strike in Iraq. For Perez-Shakdam, the atmosphere dovetailed nicely with her own views at the time.
“With Hamas stands the idea of resistance against oppression, and I think it’s very important today. I think that Israel fails to understand that – it has nothing to do with politics per se, but more to do with an idea or philosophy that people were born free,” Perez-Shakdam said in one of many interviews she did with Press TV, the Iranian state mouthpiece, in 2018.
“In the case of the Palestinians, I think that the only way forward is through armed resistance,” she added.
But Perez-Shakdam said she was always sensitive to what Iranians and others around the Middle East said about Jews. In her telling, Iran is a conflicted society, torn between liberal impulses and its conservative leadership. But antisemitism is widespread and can be found at all levels of society.
“It’s insane what people say about Israel and the Jews in Iran. I’ve been told by educated people that the Jews have horns and a tail. It’s quite scary how far the hatred runs,” she said.
A kind of mea culpa
Perez-Shakdam credits her now 17-year-old daughter with opening her mind about Israel. Her daughter, who was first exposed to pro-Israel videos on YouTube, began developing Zionist views as a teenager. When she challenged Perez-Shakdam, it sparked an intellectual journey that brought her to her current worldview.
“She kept telling me ‘I don’t get it. You’re always telling me to look at both sides of the story. Why do you keep attacking Israel, when whenever people attack Jews in general, you get angry?’” Perez-Shakdam said.
“There was this guilt I was carrying, this shame about my background, and I did a lot of reading. And I realized that I was just wrong, 100 percent wrong,” she said.
According to Perez-Shakdam, her daughter hopes to serve in the Israeli army.
“It’s been important for me to do a kind of mea culpa, to own what I’ve done and own the mistakes I’ve made. But also, I have something important to say, as someone with my journey: I’ve seen the other side of things, and I have a fuller perspective,” she said.
“My intent isn’t to defame anyone, or to become the poster girl for Israel,” she Perez-Shakdam. “But it’s important to break people out of their narrative, which is a narrative of hate.”
I’m no Mossad spy, says Jewish journalist who interviewed Raisi, worked for Iran TV
Catherine Perez-Shakdam ignites a media firestorm in Iran after publishing a ToI blog post; she appeared in Iranian state media for years before reconnecting with her Jewish roots
By Aaron BoxermanToday, 2:15 pm
On the eve of Iran’s 2017 presidential election, Ebrahim Raisi, who would become president in 2021, sat down to give an interview to the Russia Today news outlet. His interlocutor was a French citizen, Catherine Perez-Shakdam, then a practicing Shi’a Muslim.
The veiled, religiously observant Perez-Shakdam had become a regular figure in Iranian state media, giving favorable coverage to the regime and its proxies around the region. She wrote dozens of articles in English in the Iranian press and rubbed shoulders with some of the Middle East’s most notorious figures.
“Zionists are planning to annihilate Islam,” trumpeted the headline of one 2014 piece she wrote for the Iranian state mouthpiece. In the article, she vilified religious Israelis ascending to pray at the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site, as “rabid dogs.”
What Raisi likely did not know at the time was that Perez-Shakdam had been born to a Jewish family. Five years after her interview with the Iranian leader, Perez-Shakdam has become an atheist and reconnected with her long-discarded Jewish identity.
“It started to dawn on me that for years I had played into the hands of the very people who want us gone… For years, I was motivated by a kind of self-hate. But you realize that you can’t deny who you are,” Perez-Shakdam told The Times of Israel in an interview.
Perez-Shakdam wrote three posts on the Times of Israel’s blog platform in November, the third of which described her interview with Raisi. It went largely unnoticed for three months, but in recent days has started to make headlines in Persian and Arabic media, causing a social media firestorm even amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Iranian media quickly declared her an Israeli Mossad spy, and broadcasters who had been spotted with her were forced to issue clarifications.
Iranian chief cleric Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s office quickly disavowed any connection with her. Many of her media appearances and articles were wiped from state websites, although archived versions of some can still be found.
Catherine Perez-Shakdam, a French citizen of Jewish heritage (second from left) sits at a conference in Tehran in February 2017 (courtesy)
Perez-Shakdam dismisses the espionage allegations as nonsense. “I’m used to it. When they don’t like what you have to say, they come for your character — although I didn’t expect it to become quite this kind of circus,” she said.
“The only thing that really irks them is that they woke up to the fact that I’m Jewish after they let me into the circle, now that they realize that I’m the enemy — or what they perceive as the enemy,” she said.
‘I never spoke about my heritage ever’
For Perez-Shakdam, who now resides in London with her two children, the current media attention has been another step in a winding, complex life story.
Born in Paris to Jewish parents who fled Nazi persecution, Perez-Shakdam converted to Islam and spent years as a journalist and commentator in the Middle East.
“I was raised very, very secular. It wasn’t that I was cut out of the Jewish community, but I had no sense of religious belonging. I never grew up with a sense of Jewish identity,” she said.
At first, Perez-Shakdam wrote, from the UK and from Yemen, for international publications. But as her career went on, she appeared mostly as a talking head on Iranian state media. She presented Iran’s talking points to the world, but stresses she now holds very different views.
“I was really in the club. I was on television all the time. I think I’ve written for every media outlet they have, and I met quite a few people,” Perez-Shakdam said with a chuckle during her Zoom interview with The Times of Israel. “To have a Jew be featured on Press TV — the mouthpiece of the regime — bothers them.”
Catherine Perez-Shakdam speaks to The Times of Israel from London via Zoom on March 7, 2022 (Screenshot)
In 1999, as a young student at the London School of Economics, Perez-Shakdam had met her future husband, a Sunni Muslim from Sana’a in Yemen. They were married six months later. Although Perez-Shakdam converted to Islam, her Jewish background was a source of friction with her in-laws and eventually became a source of shame for her, she said.
“I never spoke about my heritage ever, because I knew that if I mentioned it, I would get bullied into silence. So I just stopped mentioning it,” Perez-Shakdam said.
While her husband was a Sunni Muslim, Perez-Shakdam found herself drawn to Islam’s second main branch, Shi’ism. Shi’ite Muslims revere a separate set of Islamic leaders — the prophet Mohammad’s son-in-law Ali and his descendants.
A strong theme of sacrifice resonates through the Shi’ite religious tradition, often centering around the figure of Hussein, Mohammad’s grandson. Hussein was killed alongside his brother Hassan by Sunni leaders at the battle of Karbala during the factional struggle in early Islam.
Every year, millions of Shi’a gather in Iraq to observe the Arba’een march. The worshippers walk to Karbala to mark the anniversary of Hussein’s martyrdom, sometimes traveling long distances on foot.
“It’s 20 million people walking, not because they have to, not out of religious duty, but out of love for this one imam that means everything to them,” Perez-Shakdam says, her voice filled with religious devotion, in a video filmed during one of the pilgrimages.
It was after her divorce, in 2014, that Perez-Shakdam got involved in Iranian media. “It snowballed really quickly. Iran is so starved for Western support that they’ll talk to anyone with a Western passport,” she said.
Even at the time, she said, she was aware that Iranian media was attempting to draft her into a “propaganda machine.”
“To a certain extent, I played along,” she said, although she said she was never compensated for her articles.
Hearing Khamenei in Tehran
In 2017, Perez-Shakdam took a trip to a mass conference on the Palestinian cause in Tehran — one of about five trips she made to Iran. She moved around apparently unhindered: by that point, she’d already been vetted by the regime, she said.
Khamenei opened the conference with a fiery diatribe condemning Israel as a “cancerous tumor.” The leader — the most powerful man in Iran — vowed that Tehran would never stop supporting Hamas and Hezbollah, to whom he attributed the successes of the Palestinian national movement.
Hamas terror chief Khaled Mashal was in attendance, as was top Iranian general Qasim Soleimani, who would be assassinated in 2020 by the United States in a drone strike in Iraq. For Perez-Shakdam, the atmosphere dovetailed nicely with her own views at the time.
“With Hamas stands the idea of resistance against oppression, and I think it’s very important today. I think that Israel fails to understand that – it has nothing to do with politics per se, but more to do with an idea or philosophy that people were born free,” Perez-Shakdam said in one of many interviews she did with Press TV, the Iranian state mouthpiece, in 2018.
“In the case of the Palestinians, I think that the only way forward is through armed resistance,” she added.
But Perez-Shakdam said she was always sensitive to what Iranians and others around the Middle East said about Jews. In her telling, Iran is a conflicted society, torn between liberal impulses and its conservative leadership. But antisemitism is widespread and can be found at all levels of society.
“It’s insane what people say about Israel and the Jews in Iran. I’ve been told by educated people that the Jews have horns and a tail. It’s quite scary how far the hatred runs,” she said.
A kind of mea culpa
Perez-Shakdam credits her now 17-year-old daughter with opening her mind about Israel. Her daughter, who was first exposed to pro-Israel videos on YouTube, began developing Zionist views as a teenager. When she challenged Perez-Shakdam, it sparked an intellectual journey that brought her to her current worldview.
“She kept telling me ‘I don’t get it. You’re always telling me to look at both sides of the story. Why do you keep attacking Israel, when whenever people attack Jews in general, you get angry?’” Perez-Shakdam said.
“There was this guilt I was carrying, this shame about my background, and I did a lot of reading. And I realized that I was just wrong, 100 percent wrong,” she said.
According to Perez-Shakdam, her daughter hopes to serve in the Israeli army.
“It’s been important for me to do a kind of mea culpa, to own what I’ve done and own the mistakes I’ve made. But also, I have something important to say, as someone with my journey: I’ve seen the other side of things, and I have a fuller perspective,” she said.
“My intent isn’t to defame anyone, or to become the poster girl for Israel,” she Perez-Shakdam. “But it’s important to break people out of their narrative, which is a narrative of hate.”