Iran Pundits Claim Talks Will Resume Once Protests Calm Down
Politicians and pundits aligned with Iran's government are telling local media that nuclear talks with the United States will resume once the uprising ebbs.
Politicians and pundits aligned with Iran's government are telling local media that nuclear talks with the United States will resume once the uprising ebbs.
These statements appear to be attempts to reassure the restless public that sees the freeze in nuclear talks as yet another ominous sign for the country’s future.
Iranian lawmaker Mohammad Hassan Asafari, a former – and possibly current – Iranian intelligence officer, told Nameh News that the talks over Iran's controversial nuclear program will be resumed in January.
Referring to Foreign Minister Hosein Amir-Abdollahian's uncorroborated comments about messages being exchanged between Tehran and Washington, Nameh News website wrote that there are signs indicating the Americans are after finding the right go-between to resume the talks after a three-month freeze.
The United States has denied the claims that it is messaging Iran to resume the talks.
Meanwhile, he told Nameh News that “it is also in the United States' interest to try to solve its problems with Iran through negotiations." He added that less than two years before the next presidential elections in the United States, Democrats need to show some achievements to voters to help them keep the White House.
The lawmaker warned that if the Americans show no interest in resuming the talks, and decide to continue their pressures on Iran, Tehran has also options on the table that might not be in Washington's interest.
Asafari said: "The Americans have realized that there is no way other than negotiations to settle their difference with the Islamic Republic. They have also realized that threats, sanctions, pressures and an endless series of resolutions against Iran cannot force Tehran to retreat."
This comes while economic analyst Hadi Haghshenas says that the UN Human Rights Commission's recent resolution has left a negative impact on Iran's economy and coupled with the country's chronic economic crisis, it has made solving Iran's problems even more complicated than ever before.
Haghshenas told Nameh News: "Economic variables such as inflation, unemployment and even economic growth will be affected by both economic and non-economic factors including floods, earthquakes, sanctions and protests." He reminded that Iran’s currency rose every time there was a positive development about the negotiations with the West, and declined every time there seemed to be no prospect for success.
He reiterated that establishing an investigation committee under the supervision of the UN to probe into the use of force and violence by the government during the protests has adversely affected the status of the country's economy.
Nonetheless, like Asafari, political activist and commentator Ahmad Bakhshayesh Ardestani is also adamant that diplomacy will resume once we see a decline in the protests.
Boastfully reiterating that Iran is the only country in the world that can say "No" to the United States, Ardestani said that naturally, the US will do anything to bring Iran under pressure. However, he argued, the West's policy toward Iran “depends on our domestic politics.” Currently, with unrest in Iran, “Westerners try to support the protests.” They work based on their interests.
"That is why they issued resolutions against Tehran at international forums to exert further pressures on Iran. But if Iran manages to come to terms with the protesters and leave the crisis behind, then the Americans would want to resume diplomacy," Ardestani said.
If Iran manages to calm down the protesters, Iran's nuclear case will not be sent to the Un Security Council, there will be no snap-back and no military action against Iran, he maintained.
IRNA, the official news agency, November 24 portrayed Iran’s acceleration of its nuclear program since 2019 as a series of responses to United States, Israeli or European actions – beginning 2018 with the US “covenant-breaking” in leaving the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), and imposing ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions.
Iran’s announcement Tuesday that it was enriching uranium to 60 percent at the Fordow site was yet another “reaction to the excesses of the West,” IRNA argued, just as enrichment to 60 percent at Natanz, another nuclear site, in April came in response to “sabotage actions” at the site attributed to Israel.
In fact, Iran decided to start 60-percent enrichment in early 2021 just as the new US administration had announced its readiness to return to the JCPOA and talks in Vienna were about to begin.
Tehran announced the latest move as a reply to a resolution raised by France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States passed November 17 at the board of the 37-member board of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The US and ‘E3’ had “tied a technical and legal case…to events inside the country and protests turned into riots,” IRNA argued. “The troika of Europe and the United States stopped the nuclear talks under the pretext of unrest inside Iran.”
Casting further doubts on talks, IRNA argued, was the looming return to power of Benjamin Netanyahu, which it suggested would “definitely intensify…the Zionist regime’s delusional claims against the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
‘Impasse’ in diplomacy
Separately, Fararu, a privately owned news agency, carried a discussion with Hosseini Kanani-Moghadam, head of Iran’s conservatively-inclined Green Party, and Fereydoun Majlesi, a former diplomat who has for some time been pessimistic over the JCPOA.
Majlesi argued that “the West” had long given up hope of negotiating with Iran and sought to re-use tactics that had undermined the Soviet Union. “Western countries,” he said, had judged that President Ebrahim Raisi’s government, which took office in 2021, inclined against the JCPOA with ministers asking why Iran accepted nuclear restrictions while gaining nothing from the agreement.
The result was an “impasse” in diplomatic efforts to restore the JCPOA – an impression confirmed, Majlesi said, by the French president and Canadian prime minister recently meeting “supporters of subversion in our country,” a reference to exiled activists and social-media ‘influencers.’ This accelerated an “agenda against Iran” over “recent years” that had “led to significant economic pressures” aimed at “impoverishing Iran.”
Kanani-Moghadam argued that Iran retained political levers “in the event of the escalation of hostile policies,” including “complete withdrawal from the JCPOA” (presumably ending all nuclear restrictions but staying within the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty), or even leaving the NPT.
Bagheri-Kani in India: Focus on economy
Post-JCPOA thinking were also evident in discussions during the visit to India of Ali Bagheri-Kani, deputy Iranian foreign minister and leading nuclear negotiator. While IRNA Thursday reported Bagheri-Kani attacking “the atmosphere created by some western media regarding the developments in Iran,” its focus was business.
While Bagheri-Kani’s brief as one of five deputy ministers is politics, his interview with Asia International News Agency(ANI) also focused on economics, and how commerce might continue should US ‘maximum pressure’ last. ANI noted that bilateral trade had risen 46 percent between 2011-12 and 2019-20.
While criticizing the US for disrupting world energy security with sanctions against Iran, Russia, and Venezuela, Bagheri-Kani highlighted potential for Iran to help India over energy in return for food exports, presumably through barter or non-dollar arrangements. He also stressed that India’s project for developing Chabahar port, in Sistan-Baluchistan province, was continuing.
New Delhi has been slow to develop the port in fear of US punitive action under ‘maximum pressure.’ Once a major buyer of Iranian oil, India has grown increasingly frustrated at Washington’s approach. It abstained, along with Pakistan, at the recent vote condemning Iran at the IAEA board.
The Ministry of Defence in London tweeted that Russia had “likely conceived of the UAV [unmanned aerial vehicles] campaign to make up for its severe shortage of cruise missiles.” Reports of the Russian forces using Iranian drones, mainly Shaheed-136, surfaced in September, but were until November denied by Tehran.
Although the use of Iranian-made drones had met with “limited success” with most of those launched neutralized, the British ministry said Moscow would “probably seek resupply” as “Russia can probably procure UAVs from overseas more rapidly than it can manufacture new cruise missiles domestically.” The drones had been both one-way or ‘kamikaze’ and reusable UAVs, the ministry said.
Some former Iranian military sources were quoted elsewhere as saying that the country can produce around 20 drones a month, which is well short of Russian’s needs.
Both sides in the Ukraine war have deployed drones, with Ukraine utilizing Turkish-made Bayraktars along with US-supplied Switchblade drones. The Russian-backed governor of Crimea province said Tuesday that five attacks, including one targeting the Balaklava power station and three on Russian naval ships, had been repelled.
The British Ministry of Defence in its tweets Wednesday said Moscow had used Iranian-made drones “largely…against tactical military targets and the Ukrainian electricity grid.” France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States have condemned Russia’s deployment of Iranian drones as an alleged violation of arms-trade provisions in the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
Iran ‘Sticking to its positions’
Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said Tuesday that Tehran had “sold very few Iranian drones in the framework of defense cooperation with Russia 11 months before the start of the Ukraine war.” Amir-Abdollahian said Iran and Ukrainian military officials had met in a third country to discuss the issue, and that “we are continuing our investigations.”
Amir-Abdollahian appeared to suggest that the Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba had told him by telephone that a drone captured by Ukrainian forces had Russian markings but “looks like an Iranian witness drone,” a model rendered in English as ‘Witness-136.’ This, Amir-Abdollahian argued, was “proof that Iran is sticking to its positions.”
The foreign minister said Iran was committed to diplomatic solutions both to the Ukraine war and the current stand-off in talks aimed at restoring the 2015 nuclear agreement, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action). Amir-Abdollahian reiterated Iran’s view than the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) should shelve its enquiry into unexplained uranium traces found in sites not declared as nuclear-related.
‘Exchange of messages should continue’
Amir-Abdollahian suggested that while efforts continued to revive the JCPOA, differences with the US remained on three issues, on which the three European JCPOA signatories were lining up with Washington. “One of these issues is solving the remaining issues of the agency [over the uranium traces], and the other issue is related to economic guarantee,” he said, referring to Iran’s expectation of being cushioned against the economic effects of the US again leaving the JCPOA and imposing sanctions, as it did in 2018 under previous president Donald Trump.
The foreign minister said that “the exchange of messages [with the US] should continue.” American officials have in recent weeks suggested that their focus is no longer on JCPOA restoration, and along with the three European states and the European Union have imposed new sanctions on Iran over military links with Russia and its response to domestic unrest.