Essay on Hem Mihan Newspaper August 20, 2023 -
The original text is in Persian and the following translation was done by Ai.
The news of the agreement to release dual Iranian-American prisoners and the transfer of six billion dollars of Iranian assets from South Korea to Qatar, which was recently broadcast, can be considered a half-step towards de-escalating tensions in the country's foreign relations. The most important origins that led to the above result can be considered, firstly, the application of such a result in addressing American public opinion at the beginning of the presidential election campaigns, and secondly, the coherence of this analysis in Iran's decision-making system for the new government's foreign policy, which cannot expect significant cooperation from other countries without fruitful processes with the United States.
It is important that the decision-making process in foreign policy is not necessarily the same as what we present as a diplomatic or media position when confronting the opposing parties, and that we do not get caught up in our declared positions. It is clear that no negotiating party enters into negotiations without a motivation arising from some kind of need. Entering into negotiations by force means negotiating on the issue at hand, which has more benefits than avoiding it.
Currently, in addition to the permanent procedures of foreign policy, there are three potential negotiation topics in Iran's foreign policy: negotiations to revive the JCPOA with the 4+1 group and the United States, negotiations with the International Atomic Energy Agency, and negotiations with European countries and the United States regarding the extradition of nationals and the opening of blocked amounts of Iranian resources.
Of course, these three sets of negotiations are officially and to some extent actually separate from each other, but naturally neither their motivations nor their results are mutually exclusive:
The negotiations to revive the JCPOA, like the JCPOA itself, seek to defeat efforts to secure Iran under the pretext of its nuclear program, including enrichment, as a major goal, and in its concrete and operational goal, it seeks to lift sanctions with the aim of opening up the economy, normal sales of oil, gas, petrochemical quotas, etc., and also attracting foreign investment. What has been clear so far and from the country's behavior throughout the nuclear case is that no one can expect negotiations with "Iran on its knees."
At the same time, the fact is that since the sanctions game is a lose-lose game with a negative sum, Iran also takes into account its negative benefit from the current situation in its calculations, which, in addition to immediate and immediate losses, includes the inability to exploit many opportunities. Therefore, from the point of view of national interests, whenever possible, utmost effort should be made to revive the JCPOA and remove the threats of the United States.
In addition, the most important achievement of the JCPOA is the arrival of its sunsets, which, despite all the initial domestic perceptions and the obstacles that have appeared on all sides to the implementation of the agreement, both the United States having withdrawn from it and Iran having stopped implementing many of its restrictions as compensatory measures and under Articles 26 and 36 of the agreement itself, are still passing their time. In all the plans for action on the issues of the 5+1 JCPOA and the IAEA, it must always be kept in mind that the sunsets of the JCPOA (in October of this year and more importantly in 2025), which play a fundamental role in removing the security environment from the nuclear program, must be preserved.
The second axis that has been constantly maintained is the country's relationship with the International Atomic Energy Agency, which, at least at the surface, has a technical aspect. Iran potentially has three categories of monitoring on its agenda: safeguards monitoring related to the agreement between Iran and the IAEA, like all other countries, monitoring related to the voluntary implementation of the Additional Protocol, and monitoring under the JCPOA, which can almost be said to be not currently operational and operational, given the circumstances explained around the JCPOA.
Naturally, the IAEA always emphasizes its technical aspect, but no one can deny the influence of Western countries on its reporting. The nature of the Agency Director General's reports is inherently uncertain: when he is determined to remove obstacles, he "has no evidence of violation" or "has no other questions"; and when he is determined not to resolve problems with a member, he "is not in a position to confirm that there was no deviation," and both of these can potentially be matched by a single piece of evidence. Therefore, in addition to the specialized and technical work with the Agency, the heavy shadow of politics has always been visible on its activities and reports. The questions that the Agency has had about alleged locations related to previous years have been answered in some cases by Iran, and even the Director General has been convinced. This path should continue, but given the volume of the Agency's monitoring of Iran in all three types compared to other members, this institution should also realize that firstly, this high level of inspections and monitoring and their acceptance indicate Iran's lack of will to meaningfully violate its nuclear activities, and secondly, Iran is always aware of the achievements of this cooperation in order to continue cooperation in clarifying alleged ambiguities and large-scale inspections. If, despite any level of cooperation, the Agency continues to ask more questions or repeat answered topics regardless of Iran's analysis (which it can do according to its formal working method because no issue is "finished" forever at the Agency), Iran will gradually lose its motivation to continue its cooperative process and de-securing its nuclear program.
The next axis of the talks, about which a lot of news has been published these days, is the issue of the release of dual-nationality prisoners in Iran in exchange for the United States' leniency in transferring and using certain resources from Iran's blocked resources, especially in Iraq and South Korea. This type of negotiation is actually a quick, operational, case-based and more trust-building negotiation. Therefore, although the transfer of resources from South Korea to Qatar or from Iraq to Oman and the possibility of spending them in certain cases alleviates a small part of Iran's problems, it should be kept in mind that this is not a remarkable achievement: the Biden administration, in its pre-election situation, does not have the possibility of entering into negotiations to revive the JCPOA, but it can always present the release and return of its citizens well in its domestic political and electoral atmosphere.
Therefore, the events that have occurred can be considered a confidence-building sideline and a small operation of the unwritten and informal agreement, known as the freeze to freeze, under which it is assumed that Iran and the United States will refrain from increasing the level of tension in the nuclear and sanctions areas.
The fact is, of course, that while welcoming this level of cooperation and de-escalation, they should not be seen as the first steps towards a comprehensive agreement or, more specifically, the revival of the JCPOA, which requires appropriate and timely negotiations, which, at least for now, the American side is not in a position to do so domestically.
Two main points: First, it is gratifying that, as it were, most domestic political tendencies, including the current government, have developed an understanding that the sanctions are serious and that their removal is necessary, and that without entering international mechanisms and normalizing relations in any order, no meaningful opening can be created in various areas of governance - especially the economy.
The second point that we must record in our history and political intersubjectivity is that the space outside our sphere of will is not always stable. If at the end of the previous administration and the beginning of the current administration, there was this possibility and will on the other side to revive the JCPOA, later and to this day it has been observed that despite the hopes and optimism expressed by the Honorable Minister of Foreign Affairs and colleagues in recent years, the Biden administration has increasingly lost its readiness to enter into substantive negotiations to revive the JCPOA due to changes in its position, including the issue of the electoral competition and the issue that has arisen for Robert Milley. We are a long way from lifting sanctions. Therefore, the environmental conditions are not always stable and it is not the case that whenever we are determined to resolve the problem, we are met with a response: we should not waste opportunities.
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