Iran To World Powers: The Ball is in Your Court

US President Barack Obama said on Monday, February 9, that there was no reason to extend nuclear talks between Iran and the P5+1 countries. There must be an agreement on the “bottom line," he said — that Iran is not pursuing a nuclear weapon — and it was time for Iran to show “political will.”

But in an apparent response the next day, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said, “Iran has taken the necessary steps, and now it’s time for world leaders to seize the opportunity.”

Addressing a branch of Iran’s military on Sunday, February 8, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei said he supported a nuclear deal. But he was adamant that the deal must be “clear and specific,” be determined in “one stage” and should absolutely not be “open to interpretation”. His statements were then published by a number of Iranian news outlets.

Secretary of State John Kerry, who met with Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif in Munich over the weekend, reiterated Obama’s statements, saying it would be “impossible” to extend nuclear negotiations with Iran if an agreement on fundamental principles is not reached in the coming weeks.

Many of Iran’s key officials were hostile to the US warnings. Speaker of the Parliament Ali Larijani said, “The Americans think they are bargaining in a fruit market. The West must convince us, not pressure us or try to deceive us.” It is a popular argument with those who oppose a nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1 countries: the US is deceptive and cannot be trusted.

Former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, Chairman of the Expediency Council, weighed in, referring to some Western leaders’ statements as “irrational”. “If we decide that they are violating our rights,” he said, “we will quit negotiations and bid them farewell.”

Iran: Have we Been Here Before?

From the perspective of some Iranian politicians, this is all too familiar. For them, the US is behaving as it always does. Former Foreign Minister Ali-Akbar Velayati, who is now the senior international affairs advisor to Ayatollah Khamenei, said comments from Obama and Kerry — who he dismissed as inexperienced and inconsistent — were a stalling technique, a bid to string out negotiations for as long as possible. “The Americans — or the Israelis, who are closely linked to the Americans — did the same thing with the Oslo Accord in 1993 [when a deal between Israel and Palestine was reached, mediated by the United States and other countries]. There it was agreed that the details would be worked out within five years. Now, 22 years later, none of what was agreed has been realized. This is another American tactic. In the previous round of negotiations in Vienna, everybody thought an agreement had been reached — but suddenly, Mr. Kerry announced that the negotiations had been renewed for another seven months. It automatically made us think of the Oslo Accord.”

“It is not important what John Kerry says,” Velayati added, responding to the Secretary of State’s latest statements. “We are not bound by American decrees. We decide for ourselves by our own authority and as an independent country. We have not promised to do whatever the Americans tell us to do.”

Positive Signs?

Hossein Mousavian, who sat on Iran’s nuclear negotiating team from 2003 to 2005 under the reformist president Mohammad Khatami, had a positive take on Ayatollah Khamenei’s statements. Khamenei’s determination not to accept a two-stage deal meant that those wanting to scupper an agreement will be likely to fail, he said. It is only when the process gets bogged down in stages, according to him, that the “devils behind the curtain” will have their chance to sabotage any agreement reached. Given this analysis, Mousavian believes the leader’s comments were designed to support the deal, not upend it.

Mehdi Mohammadi, member of the negotiating team under former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, also dismissed US warnings as a bluff, a statement that was reproduced by Iran’s hardliner media websites and newspapers. The US, he said, has no alternative: They will not leave the negotiating table because war is out of the question and further sanctions are impractical. They are simply not willing to let the Geneva Accord fall through. What happens with Iran also has an impact on domestic politics in the US, according to Mohammadi: the Democratic Party needs a deal in order to bolster its prospects in the next election. And finally, he said, the US must maintain relations with Iran to help with other aspects of international affairs. Iran, hardliner media argued, is the sensible, strong one in the relationship.

So Iran is unified in its outlook, or so it would appear. Whatever the outcome, however, it is likely that cracks in this unity will appear once again. We have certainly been here before.