In Iran, the two political currents, if we could call them so, are fighting with each other about the fate of Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with global powers, known formally by the acronym JCPOA.
The so-called reformist faction, which is now represented by the regime’s president Hassan Rouhani, is struggling to revive the JCPOA. And its rival faction the so-called principlists, which is represented by the regime’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei, is trying to sabotage the reformists’ efforts in the negotiations with the world powers.
Despite all these shows, the regime’s main wish which is under the authority of the supreme leader is to revive the JCPOA, Iran analysts say. The rest of the story seems to be more like a political theatre and is used by Khamenei’s loyalist to revive the spirits of the Basijis, the regime’s forces, and its mercenaries in the region.
The Mehr news agency in an article attacking the government and its efforts to revive the JCPOA on May 14 wrote:
“As Iran’s presidential election approaches, some are seeking an agreement with the West to revive the JCPOA. But there are serious questions that need to be answered. Because the evidence shows that the red lines announced by the leadership in these negotiations have been violated again, and it seems that another pure damage is on the way.”
The article confessing about the failure of the JCPOA and its damages to the regime wrote: “Today, it is clear to any fair observer that the JCPOA was nothing but a loss to Iran. But why did the JCPOA fail to meet expectations as claimed by the JCPOA? The main problems of the JCPOA can be summarized in the following cases:
- Lack of necessary guarantees to fulfill the obligations of the Western parties
Contrary to the claims of the Iranian negotiating team, the JCPOA lacked a serious legal mechanism to compel the Western parties to fulfill their obligations. The US presence in this agreement was based on an executive order from the President of this country, which with the change of government in the US, Trump simply violated it and left it! In addition to the United States, European countries have not actually complied with their obligations.
- Lack of proper and fair mechanism for resolving disputes
The dispute resolution mechanism in the JCPOA (trigger mechanism) was designed in such a way that practically any protest that Iran made in violation of the Western Covenant could lead to the return of UN Security Council resolutions against Iran! This was one of the main reasons for the government’s appeasement of the violation of numerous Western treaties.
- Suspension of sanctions instead of lifting them
Although after the signing of the JCPOA, the President of our country officially announced that all sanctions have been ‘lifted’ and not ‘suspended’, the reality was that these sanctions were suspended for 120 days by the executive order of the US President and its re-suspension required a new order. Thus, despite the suspension of some sanctions because the shadow of sanctions has always been on the Iranian economy, the risk of cooperation with Iran for foreign parties did not decrease and the effect of sanctions remained in place.
- Maintaining the structure of sanctions
But the bottom line is that although the Iranian government claimed that the US sanction’s structure was broken, the reality was that the sanctions’ structure was completely safe, and the return of sanctions depended on a signature or even no signature. Therefore, the sanctions had no practical result for Iran and were only suspended on paper.
Interestingly, all the JCPOA’s weaknesses are those that have been repeatedly pointed out as the red lines of negotiations by the system’s leadership, but the Iranian negotiating team acted hastily and inflicted this great damage on the country.”
The article frustrated and fearing the result of the JCPOA’s negotiations asked, “Which JCPOA is to be revived in the Vienna talks?!”
It added: “Now the question is which JCPOA is going to be revived? Is it the same JCPOA in which there is no guarantee that the Western parties will comply in practice with their obligations? Will it be the same JCPOA in which the structure of US sanctions is maintained, and the suspension of sanctions (not their lifting) be conditional on the signature of the US President for 120-day periods?! It is natural that returning to such an agreement will be a repetition of the same sheer damage that the current situation of the country is the result of the same agreement.”
The conclusion of these short summary by the state-run Mehr news agency is very simple. Despite all the factional dispute shows and the regime’s claim about an opening and progress of the negotiations and the lifting of the sanctions, this time the regime is not the winner of the JCPOA negotiations and must pay double the price to satisfy the world powers, which are demanding even more and are adding the regime’s regional meddling, its missile program and its human rights case into the new agreement, which according to the regime’s media is known as JCPOA+ with more damages to the regime.
