By Syed Khalique Ahmed
NEW DELHI—At a time when ultra-nationalists and radical conservatives are getting strengthened in liberal Europe as evidenced by the performance of far-right political parties and their candidates in the just concluded presidential elections in France, and polls conducted for European Parliament members in all the 27-member countries of the European Union, Iran has elected a reformist and moderate president.
This is even though Iran is considered a conservative society by European intellectuals and media houses.
The 69-year-old Masoud Pezeshkian, during his election campaign, repeatedly said that he was a reformist, who intended to resume talks with the US and other countries involved in the Iran nuclear deal, besides reforms in domestic policies of his country.
Though he has announced his full support for the policies of Iran’s Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Pezeshkian is not in favour of imposing dress codes like headscarves for women. He has left it to the personal choice of individuals themselves. The wearing of headscarves by women in Iran was blown out of proportion by the Western media to accuse Iran of human rights violations under Iran’s former president Ebrahim Raisi who died in a helicopter crash that necessitated holding elections to choose a new president.
Soon after getting elected, Pezeshkian announced that he wanted to resume talks with the US to revive the Iran nuclear deal, called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The JCPOA deal that Iran signed in 2015 with the US, Britain, China, France, Russia and Germany focused on Iran limiting its nuclear programme in exchange for the lifting of economic and other sanctions imposed on it by the US and other Western powers.
Pezeshkian’s declaration was the continuation of the policies of the previous President Hasan Rouhani, who was also considered a moderate. Rouhani could not succeed in holding talks for the revival of the JCPOA agreement due to opposition from Iranian conservatives or ultra-nationalists. Israel also used its influence over the US not to revive the Iran nuclear deal because it went against the interest of the Jewish state. Since Pezeshkian belongs to the reformist group and expressed his desire to engage with the West, it was hoped that the West would accept his offer. Pezeshkian in the past had faced problems in Iran for his moderate and reformist views on various issues.
But Pezeshkian, a cardiac surgeon by his training and profession, failed to cut ice with the US and other Western powers. The US outrightly has rejected his offer of talks on reviving the nuclear deal with Iran.
At a press conference, White House National Security Advisor John F. Kirby told media persons that there was no chance of the US reviving the Iran nuclear deal which was scrapped by former US president Donald Trump in 2018. Trump claimed that Iran had not kept the promises of limiting its nuclear programme and hence, there was no need to continue the JCPOA agreement.
Iran is not a small country like many European countries which have no resources or anything to offer to the world. Most of the smaller European countries are dependent on bigger European nations like Germany, France, and Britain for their survival. They will face severe employment problems if visa-free movement from one country to another is lifted and their currencies will fall sharply if made independent of the Euro. They are surviving and challenging the bigger countries like Iran because all the 27 European Union countries, or to be exact, Christian Union countries, have their economies linked with each other and hence, they have become very strong economies. As for defence, they have formed NATO, the world’s biggest military alliance that threatens any country that goes against the interest of any NATO member. So, the European Union is basically a Christian Khilafat with a joint army ready to pound any country perceived as a threat to the common interest of the EU.
As Iran is pitted against the world’s most powerful bloc led by the US, the new Iranian President offered to open talks with the US heading the bloc or the Christian Khilafat. Iran is the world’s second-biggest producer of petroleum and fuel gas and is very close to Europe, it can supply petroleum gases to Europe at a very low cost after Russia banned the gas supply due to the Ukraine war in which the US and European countries are giving military and economic assistance to Ukraine.
Giving reasons for the US not ready to resume talks with Iran, Kirby told reporters that Iran supported the Axis of Resistance in the Middle East – Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Houthis in Yemen – who all were engaged in war with Israel, the closest ally of the US in the Middle East. Kirby also raised the issue of Iran supplying drones to Russia that were being used in the war against Ukraine. According to Kirby, a lot has changed about Iran in the Middle East since 2015 when the Obama administration signed the deal and hence, it is not advisable to revive the deal again now. Iran is also reported to be involved in targeting the US bases in Iraq after Iran’s most powerful military commander, Gen Qasem Soleimani, was killed by a US air strike in Iraq in 2020.
But what Iran did was in its national interest. If it set up its proxies in Lebanon, Palestine, and Yemen, it has done so to defend itself in case of an attack by the US, Israel, or European powers. But the US questioning Iran’s right to self-defence amounts to an affront to a sovereign nation. The US is itself supplying arms and ammunition to Israel involved in the genocide of Palestinians since October last year.
A day after Kirby’s statements to the media, Iran’s president-elect issued a lengthy letter to Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Husain Nasrallah pledging to continue Iran’s support to the resistance forces in Lebanon. This was a sharp rebuke to the US.
“The support for resistance is rooted in the fundamental policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the ideals of Imam Khomeini, and the guidance of the esteemed Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, and will continue with strength,” he wrote in the letter.
This has now dashed all hopes of reconciliation and reducing the tension between Iran and the US.
Middle East experts say the US should have accepted Pezeshkian’s offer and not directly rejected it. Now the ball is totally in the US court to revive the JCPOA deal with Iran or not.
