George Bush’s post-9/11 label weighs on a sanctioned Islamic republic seeking a nuclear deal
Twenty years have passed since George Bush included Iran in what he called the “axis of evil” that threatened the world, along with Syria and North Korea. Neither the signing of the nuclear deal in 2015 nor the advanced negotiations to restore the pact led the Iranians to abolish this label, although two decades later the new threat would be, according to the United States, consisting of the ashes. formed by Russia and China, an axis to which Iran has turned in search of support to help it overcome sanctions.
Experts in the Islamic Republic such as Luciano Záccara, an associate professor at the University of Qatar, believe the label is still valid. “When we see how the Joe Biden and Barack Obama administrations have combined the stick and the carrot (negotiations and sanctions), as well as maintaining a clear policy of containment through the sale of arms to allied countries in the region that Iran sees as such. not a threat to at least one state that cannot be trusted one hundred percent. It is clear that Iran is still part of a group of countries that the United States considers disruptive to the international system and to its interests in the region,” Záccara said.
Biden’s return to the nuclear deal that tore up Donald Trump and the role Iran’s vast oil and gas reserves could play in the current global crisis caused by the war in Ukraine would help restore Iran’s image in the West.
These are some key points to understanding 21st century Iran.
“We are not Arabs, we are Persians. We don’t speak Arabic, we speak Farsi” are two golden rules to start every trip to Iran the right way. Ancient Persia shares Islam with its Arab neighbors, but here 90% of its 81 million inhabitants belong to the Shia sect and not to the Sunni sect, followed by more than 80% of the world’s Muslims.
The supreme political and religious authority is the Supreme Leader. It is a post created after the triumph of the Islamic revolution and held for the first time by Ayatollah Khomeini and since 1989 by Ayatollah Khamenei, who is currently 83 years old. His power cannot be questioned because it is based on the principle of ‘velayat-y-faqih’, which gives him spiritual supremacy and makes him an infallible guide. It has the final say on important issues such as nuclear energy.
Nearly half of those 84 million Iranians are under the age of 30, and more than 26 million have been born since the turn of the millennium. It is a country full of young people, on average 32 years old, who have known only the kind of ‘ayatolacracy’ that has ruled the country since the triumph of the religious revolution in 1979 and who are victims of the permanent state of disarray in international politics by confrontation with the United States and Israel. Four decades after its inception, the Islamic system survives, but appears outdated in the face of the youngest’s demands for change and openness. The regime is fighting for its survival and any mobilization, such as the one that took place after the 2009 elections during the so-called ‘green uprising’, is being cut short. For the leaders, these protests are always the result of foreign interference.
Several governments are trying to diversify the economy and end dependence on oil, but in the end they always look to “black gold” to balance the bills. According to the executive director of the National Oil Company, Mohsen Joyaste Mehr, production has reached levels before the sanctions the US imposed on Tehran in 2018, amounting to daily exports of 3.8 million barrels per day. This production is mainly focused on China. Iran is also the second country with the largest gas reserves…after Russia.
Barack Obama ended decades of confrontation with Tehran and after the signing of the nuclear deal in 2015, there were moments of thaw. Iran, then with moderate Hassan Rouhani as president, pledged to freeze uranium enrichment to a level of 3.67% in exchange for the lifting of sanctions and accepted the strict scrutiny of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors. The Iranians kept everything that was agreed, but Trump called it “the worst possible pact”, left it unilaterally and re-imposed sanctions. Rouhani’s entire plan for economic improvement thanks to the lifting of sanctions was lost and the regime’s most conservative sector emerged stronger.
Biden promised to return to the path of dialogue during the campaign, but for now the sanctions remain in place. In the event that the new pact goes through, the Iranians are demanding assurances that a change of tenant in the White House will not mean another unilateral exit.
Iran maintains it is peaceful, but there is great distrust in the West and especially in Israel, its great regional enemy and possessor of a nuclear arsenal. Since Trump reinstated sanctions, the Iranians have taken steps to distance them from the 2015 text, but assure they are “reversible.” The steps taken deviate from the agreed text, such as producing uranium metal, which is necessary for the production of atomic fuel, but can also be used to make the core of a warhead, enrich uranium to a purity of 60 % or to the state of state-of-the-art centrifuges.
Despite the sanctions, attacks on its facilities and the assassination of one of its key scientists, operations Tehran accuses Israel of, the Islamic Republic has managed to accelerate its program to a level it had never done before and is closer, experts say. than ever until the bomb.
The country in the world with the world’s third-largest oil reserves and second-largest gas reserves is facing a chronic economic crisis due to management problems and the difficulties caused by sanctions. The Statistical Center of Iran (SCI), the country’s main statistics agency, reported an alarming record rise in monthly inflation of 12.2% last month. Food prices are up 54% in 2022 and the rial is trading at record lows against the dollar. The rampant inflation has left no sector of the Iranian economy untouched. The unrest in the streets is leading to frequent protests from various sectors and Raisi has failed to turn around as he promised when he won the election.
The Indian writer’s attack at a New York conference brought Khomeini’s 1989 fatwa (Islamic edict) back into the news. Tehran authorities immediately distanced themselves from what happened and conservative media such as Kayhan described it as “divine revenge”. In Iran, the words of Khomeini are orders, and since 2012, the reward for the head of the author of “The Satanic Verses” is 3.5 million dollars. This is the price set by the 15 Khordad religious foundation, which believes that “until the fatwa against the apostate Rushdie is consumed, there will be no final insult. If the edict had already been issued, we would not have been bothered by the Prophet’s cartoons (referring to those published in Denmark in 2005), the articles and films such as ‘The Innocence of Muslims’». As for Rushdie, there are no rifts between Iran’s religious elite and everyone agrees to condemn the novelist for holding him responsible for subsequent attacks on the image of the prophet in various formats.
Source: La Verdad
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