by Djavad Salehi-Isfahani

The decision announced last Monday in Vienna to extend the talks aimed at a compressive agreement on Iran’s nuclear program for an additional seven months has resulted in Iran’s currency taking dive. In one week, the rial lost more than 5% of its value in the unofficial market. The devaluation has clear political and economic implications: it will revive inflation, slow or stop economic growth, and increase the pressure on Iranian President Hassan Rouhani as his government tries to make good on the election promises he made 18 months ago.

But will this soften Iran’s negotiating position? To answer this question, we need to look at the basis of this phase of the rial’s devaluation and what it means for ordinary Iranians.

The drop in the value of the rial after the extension was announced on Nov. 24 indicates that expectations in Iran for a final deal were high before the deal failed to materialize. This optimism had kept the rial’s value above what the economics of the situation warranted. In other words, rather than being in “free fall,” as several reports in the press have suggested, the rial is actually adjusting to a new equilibrium.

Two major factors have been putting pressure on the rial in the last few months, neither of which is related to the negotiations or the sanctions. The first is the decline of the price of oil, by more than 30% since this summer, which has reduced the already strained supply of foreign currency to the Iranian economy. As I noted in my previous post, prior to Nov. 24, the rial had remained surprisingly stable despite the falling price of oil.

The rial was also under pressure because Iran’s inflation exceeded that of its major trading partners, making Iranian producers less competitive. Prices in Iran have increased by 23% since Rouhani’s election in June 2013 when the rial traded around 31,000 per dollar. All else the same, the rial would have to fall by 23% to keep Iranian production competitive. That would mean an exchange rate of over 38,000 rials per dollar in the unofficial market and 32,500 in the official market. Presently, these rates are at 34,000 and 26,500.

Of course, all else is not the same. The price of oil is lower, Iran has started receiving around $700 million a month of its unfrozen assets, and there have been changes in economic policy. Some of these changes, like the lower price of oil, would require the rial to devalue further, while others would have the opposite effect.

At the same time, although the rial could continue to decline, currently it’s certainly not in free fall.

An overlooked fact in Western press reports on this issue is that the Rouhani government, populated in part by economists focused on the competitiveness of Iranian producers, had signaled its intention to officially devalue the rial before the Nov. 24 extension was announced. Indeed, officials spoke publicly last month about a (modest) 7.5% increase in the official exchange rate to be used in the 1394 (2015/2016) budget to 28,500 rials to the dollar.

Now on to that burning question: How long will this crisis last?

The pace of devaluation in the free market has quickly slowed down—the rial even rose against the dollar on Dec. 1—but as I mentioned earlier, further drops in the value of the rial are still possible as the reality of the lower price of oil sinks in.

Devaluation is a sign of an underlying imbalance in the economy, so when it happens, people are naturally alarmed. But it is also part of the solution to the same imbalances that need correcting. Consider, for example, that a cheaper rial is good for production and employment, even in a poor business environment hampered by international sanctions and domestic impediments to production, which business people refer to as “internal sanctions.”

Devaluations also redistribute income. In the short-run, inflation, which dropped last year below 20%, will rise as prices for goods bought and sold at the unofficial rate increase. The burden of the higher inflation will fall primarily on people living on fixed incomes, on the public payroll, and those who travel abroad or send money to their children abroad—all of whom compose the better part of the middle class.

Unlike former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Rouhani does not believe in directly paying the poor, so what happens to this segment—about 10-20%— of the Iranian population is less certain. Wages of unskilled workers usually increase with inflation, though not always in tandem. They also rise with demand for labor, which could get a boost from devaluation. However, the 30% increase in the price of bread that was quietly implemented earlier this week, on Dec. 1, will hurt the poor disproportionately, as it was put through without any compensatory mechanism.

Of course, if the Rouhani government is forced to reduce the country’s much larger energy subsidies to balance its budget in the face of falling oil revenues, it may ultimately have to swallow its pride and take up the Ahmadinejad cash transfer mechanism, which Rouhani strongly criticized during his presidential campaign.

Ultimately, the drop in the price of oil will result in lower economic growth and loss of income across the country. But there is no policy that can fully compensate for a large decline in the terms of trade, which the recent decline in the price of oil represents—there are only good and bad policy responses. Allowing the rial to devalue is a good start, but not enough. The government should also be planning policies to help domestic producers rise to the occasion and measures required to protect the poor as prices for basic goods such as bread and energy rise.

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by Ariane Tabatabai

With the November 24 deadline for a comprehensive deal between world powers and Iran on the country’s nuclear program now behind us, the negotiating teams have returned to their capitals to debate next steps. They will reconvene in Oman in early December to continue their efforts to strike a deal in seven months.

The extension represents both good and bad news. It shows once again that the parties truly want a final deal and that they are ready to take up the task. At the same time, the prolonged timeframe for a deal won’t be welcomed by various factions back home, who now have more time and room to derail the process altogether.

Indeed, as the negotiating teams were working around the clock to try to bridge the remaining gaps, various groups in Tehran and Washington, as well as in Tel Aviv and Riyadh, were working to get their own concerns onto the negotiating table.

In the United States, some influential members of Congress believe that Iran is in a comfortable position, not really seeking a solution but rather an indefinite extension of the talks to get sanctions relief. But as noted by Secretary of State John Kerry from Vienna on the day the extension was announced, Iran has been complying with the interim deal concluded in November 2013. In fact, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released a report the same day showing that key elements of the Iranian nuclear program remain suspended. Tehran, then, is not just kicking the can down the road.

Powerful Iranian figures also have concerns about the extension. They believe that the interim Joint Plan of Action (JPOA), signed last year in Geneva, has effectively suspended important parts of the country’s nuclear program without giving Iran much back in return. However, they are also ignoring an important element of the process: The JPOA has granted Tehran access to some of its frozen assets, as it slowly prepares to reopen its market to international business, and leave its political isolation.

Over the next few months, critics on all sides will become louder, especially as Tehran and Washington continue to engage in cordial settings, raising concerns among some of their respective key constituencies.

The remaining key issues—the number of centrifuges Iran will be able to keep and operate, the timeframe of the deal, and sanctions relief—will likely be the main points of contention for these constituencies.

Other challenges could also arise in the process, including the interpretation of the JPOA over the next several months and the grey areas it includes. For instance, a couple of weeks prior to the deadline, Iran began to feed its IR-5 centrifuges (currently non-operational) with Uranium Hexafluoride, which caused a serious debate among nuclear experts. According to David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security, this act was a violation of the interim deal. Others, however, including Jeffrey Lewis at the Monterey Institute, rejected the charge, stating that the JPOA does in fact allow Iran to pursue research and development, including this activity. Expectedly, Iran denied that it had failed to uphold its end of the bargain and the US State Department ultimately backed up the Iranian position.

However, while key components of the Iranian program, including the installation of new centrifuges or further work on the Arak heavy water reactor, are suspended under the JPOA, Tehran continues its research and development. This means that a new generation of centrifuges could add fuel to the fire. Ideally, Iran would refrain from such activities while the talks are ongoing. But while such a step would be received positively on the international stage, thereby aiding the confidence-building process, domestically, it would backfire. It would provide conservatives and other hard-liners in Tehran with more ammunition to shoot at the negotiating team and the government generally.

Indeed, balancing international and domestic priorities and expectations is going to constitute a major challenge for Iranian President Hassan Rouhani as the talks continue. If his government is to make any concessions, it needs to show its domestic constituencies that it is not giving up and still making progress on the nuclear program.

The good news is that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the highest authority in Iran, continues to back the negotiating process. He reiterated his support for the negotiators led by Foreign Minister Javad Zarif on Nov. 25, the day after the deadline was missed, saying that Zarif and his team remained standing even as the West tried to force them to kneel. This crucial statement, which reiterated his deep mistrust of the West, came amid increasing pressure from hard-liners in Tehran and will serve in quieting them down for a while.

But as they key countries of Iran and the United States continue to engage, the prospect of prolonged détente, and especially rapprochement between the two long-time adversaries will result in the unity of four unlikely stakeholders—hard-liners in Tehran and Washington, as well as Riyadh and Tel Aviv—in opposing improved US-Iran relations, for their own reasons.

Meanwhile, the stakes are higher than ever. President Obama, who will be dealing with a Republican-dominated Congress as of January, needs a major foreign policy achievement before his term is up in 2016. In the meantime, his ability to effectively “defeat and ultimately destroy” Islamic State forces in Iraq and Syria—another defining element of is presidential legacy—will inevitably be influenced by the outcome of the talks. On the Iranian side, by the new deadline of July 1, 2015, the Iranian president will have spent the better half of his first term almost entirely focused on the nuclear issue, essentially rendered unable to seriously advance other items on his agenda.

In other words, both presidents have been banking on a historic deal, but while the extension of the talks allows Tehran and the West to continue engaging, thereby building the trust necessary for a final accord, it also means more time and room for detractors to sabotage the process.

Ariane Tabatabai is an Associate at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center and a columnist for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 

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by Robert E. Hunter

It’s too early to tell all there is to be told about the negotiations in Vienna between the so-called P5+1 and Iran on the latter’s nuclear program. The “telling” by each and every participant of what happened will surely take place in the next several days, and then better-informed assessments can be made. As of now, we know that the talks did not reach agreement by the November 24 deadline—a year after the interim Joint Plan of Action was agreed—and that the negotiators are aiming for a political agreement no later than next March and a comprehensive deal by June 30.

This is better than having the talks collapse. Better still would have been a provisional interim fill-in-the-blanks memorandum of headings of agreement that is so often put out in international diplomacy when negotiations hit a roadblock but neither side would have its interests served by declaring failure.

An example of failing either to set a new deadline or to issue a “fill in the blanks” agreement was vividly provided by President Bill Clinton’s declaration at the end of the abortive Camp David talks in December 2000. He simply declared the talks on an Israeli-Palestinian settlement as having broken down, rather than saying: progress has been made, here are areas of agreement, here is the timetable for the talks to continue, blah, blah. I was at dinner in Tel Aviv with a group of other American Middle East specialists and Israel’s elder statesman, Shimon Peres, when the news came through. We were all nonplussed that Clinton had not followed the tried and true method of pushing off hard issues until talks would be resumed, at some level, at a “date certain,” which had been the custom on this diplomacy since at least 1981. One result was such disappointment among Palestinians that the second intifada erupted, producing great suffering on all sides and a setback for whatever prospects for peace existed. Poor diplomacy had a tragic outcome.

This example calls for a comparison of today’s circumstances with past diplomatic negotiations of high importance and struggles over difficult issues. Each, it should be understood, is unique, but there are some common factors.

Optimism

The first is the good news that I have already presented: the talks in Vienna did not “break down” and no one walked away from the table in a huff. The other good news is that the official representatives of the two most important negotiators, the United States and Iran, clearly want to reach an agreement that will meet both of their legitimate security, economic, and other interests. Left to themselves, they would probably have had a deal signed, sealed, and delivered this past weekend if not before. But they have not been “left to themselves,” nor will they be, as I will discuss below.

Further good news is that all the issues involving Iran’s nuclear program have now been so masticated by all the parties that they are virtually pulp. If anything is still hidden, it is hard to imagine, other than in the minds of conspiracy theorists who, alas, exist in abundance on any issue involving the Middle East. A deal to be cut on specifics? Yes. New factors to consider? Highly unlikely.

Even more good news is that the United States and the other P5+1 countries (US, UK, Russia, China, France plus Germany), have got to know much better than before their official Iranian counterparts and overall Iranian interests, perspectives, and thinking (US officials, long chary of being seen in the same room with “an Iranian,” lag behind the others in this regard). We can hope that this learning process has also taken place on the Iranian side. This does not mean that the actual means whereby Iran takes decisions—nominally, at least, in the hands of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei—is any less opaque. But even so, there is surely greater understanding of one another—one of the key objectives of just about any diplomatic process.

A partial precedent can be found in US-Soviet arms control and other negotiations during the Cold War. The details of these negotiations were important, or so both sides believed, especially what had to be a primarily symbolic fixation with the numbers of missile launchers and “throw-weight.” This highly charged political preoccupation took place even though the utter destruction of both sides would be guaranteed in a nuclear war. Yet even with great disparities in these numbers, neither side would have been prepared to risk moving even closer to the brink of conflict. Both US and Soviet leaders came to realize that the most important benefit of the talks was the talking, and that they had to improve their political relationship or risk major if not catastrophic loss on both sides. The simple act of talking proved to be a major factor in the eventual end of the Cold War.

The parallel with the Iran talks is that the process itself—including the fact that it is now legitimate to talk with the “Devil” on the other side—has permitted, even if tacitly, greater understanding that the West and Iran have, in contrast to their differences, at least some complementary if not common interests. For the US and Iran, these include freedom of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz; counter-piracy; opposition to Islamic State (ISIS or IS); stability in Afghanistan; opposition to the drug trade, al-Qaeda, Taliban and terrorism; and at least a modus vivendi in regard to Iraq. This does not mean that the US and Iran will see eye-to-eye on all of these issues, but they do constitute a significant agenda, against which the fine details of getting a perfect nuclear agreement (from each side’s perspective) must be measured.

Pessimism

There is also bad news, however, including in the precedents, or partial precedents, of other negotiations. As already noted, negotiations over the fate of the West Bank and Gaza have been going on since May 1979 (I was the White House member of the first US negotiating team), and, while some progress has been made, the issues today look remarkably like they did 37 years ago.

Negotiations following the 1953 armistice in the Korean War have also been going on, with fits and starts, for 61 years. The negotiations over the Vietnam War (the US phase of it) dragged on for years and involved even what in retrospect seem to have been idiocies like arguments over the “shape of the table.” They came to a conclusion only when the US decided it was time to get out—i.e., the North Vietnamese successfully waited us out. Negotiations over Kashmir have also been going on, intermittently, since the 1947 partition of India. The OSCE-led talks on Nagorno-Karabakh (Armenia versus Azerbaijan) have gone on for about two decades, under the nominal chairmanship of France, Russia, and the United States. All this diplomatic activity relates to a small group of what are now called “frozen conflicts,” where negotiations go on ad infinitum but without a lot of further harm done.

But with the exception of the Vietnam talks, all the other dragged-out talking has taken place against the background of relatively stable situations. Talks on Korea go nowhere, but fighting only takes place in small bursts and is not significant. Even regarding the Palestinians, fighting takes place from time to time, including major fighting, but failure to get a permanent end of hostilities does not lead to a fundamental breakdown of “stability” in the Middle East, due to the tacit agreement of all outside powers.

Dangers of Delay

The talks on the Iranian nuclear program, due to restart in December, are different. While they are dragging along, things happen. Sanctions continue and could even be increased on Iran, especially with so many “out for blood” members of the incoming 114^th US Congress. Whether this added pressure will get the US a better deal is debatable, but further suffering for the Iranian people, already far out of proportion to anything bad that Iran has done, will just get worse. Iran may also choose to press forward with uranium enrichment, making a later deal somewhat—who knows how much—more difficult to conclude and verify. Israel will have calculations of its own to make about what Iran is up to and whether it should seriously consider the use of force. And chances for US-Iranian cooperation against IS will diminish.

So time is not on the side of an agreement, and any prospects of Iranian-Western cooperation on other serious regional matters have been further put off—a high cost for all concerned.

Due to the contentious domestic politics on both sides, the risks are even greater. In Iran, there are already pressures from the clerical right and from some other nationalists to undercut both the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, and the lead negotiator, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, both of whom, in these people’s eyes, are now tainted. We can expect further pressures against a deal from this quarter.

The matter is at least as bad and probably worse on the Western side—more particularly, on the US side. The new Congress has already been mentioned. But one reason for consideration of that factor is that, on the P5+1 side of the table, there have not just been six countries but eight, two invisible but very much present, and they are second and third in importance at the table only behind the US itself: Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Both countries are determined to prevent any realistic agreement with Iran on its nuclear program, even if declared by President Barack Obama, in his judgment, to satisfy fully the security interests of both the United States and its allies and partners, including Israel and the Gulf Arabs. For them, in fact, the issue is not just about Iran’s nuclear program, but also about the very idea of Iran being readmitted into international society. For the Sunni Arabs, it is partly about the struggle with the region’s Shi’as, including in President Bashar Assad’s Syria but most particularly in Iran. And for all of these players, there is also a critical geopolitical competition, including vying for US friendship while opposing Iran’s reemergence as another regional player.

The United States does not share any of these interests regarding Sunni vs. Shi’a or geopolitical competitions among regional countries. Our interests are to foster stability in the region, promote security, including against any further proliferation of nuclear weapons (beginning with Iran), and to help counter the virus of Islamist fundamentalism. On the last-named, unfortunately, the US still does not get the cooperation it needs, especially from Saudi Arabia, whose citizens have played such an instrumental role in exporting the ideas, money, and arms that sustain IS.

Thus it is to be deeply regretted, certainly by all the governments formally represented in the P5+1, that efforts to conclude the talks have been put off. The enemies of agreement, on both sides, have gained time to continue their efforts to prevent an agreement—enemies both in Iran and especially in the United States, with the heavy pressures from the Arab oil lobby and the Israeli lobby in the US Congress.

What happens now in Iran can only be determined by the Iranians. What happens with the P5+1 will depend, more than anything else, on the willingness and political courage of President Obama to persevere and say “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead” to the Gulf Arab states, Israel, and their allies in the United States, and do what he is paid to do: promote the interests and security of the United States of America.

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As Iran and six world powers scramble to reach a deal over Iran’s nuclear program by the deadline of Nov. 24 in Vienna, Washington is seeing a flurry of last-minute events focused on the pros and cons of pursuing diplomacy with Tehran.

While advocates from both sides made their arguments on Capitol Hill this week, two distinguished former US ambassadors told an audience here Wednesday that a deal between world powers and Iran over its nuclear program offers “huge advantages” and that the chances of a “complete breakdown” in the talks at this stage are low, even if the prospect of a comprehensive accord being signed before the looming deadline is also unlikely.

Stuart Eizenstat, who played a key role in promoting sanctions against Iran under both Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, endorsed the diplomatic process with Iran at a Nov. 19 panel discussion hosted here by the Atlantic Council.

“I am of the belief that an agreement is important, and that there are huge advantages—to the United States, to the West, and to Israel—in having an agreement along the lines of what we see emerging,” he said.

Last month the veteran diplomat, who was named special adviser to the secretary on Holocaust issues last year, offered a key endorsement of diplomacy with Iran in an interview with the Jerusalem Post.

Eizenstat, who currently chairs the Coucil’s Iran Task Force, also emphasized the consequences of failing to reach an accord with Iran:

Without an agreement, one always has to ask, “What’s the alternative?” No deal means an unrestrained [Iranian] use of centrifuges, it means a continuation of the Iranian plutonium plant in Arak, it means no intrusive inspections by the IAEA, it means no elimination of [Iran’s] 20% enriched uranium, it means less likelihood of eliminating weaponization, it means undercutting those who are relative moderates in Iran. So there are enormous implications.

Thomas Pickering, who served as Washington’s chief envoy in virtually every hot spot—from Moscow to San Salvador and from Lagos and Tel Aviv to Turtle Bay (in the run-up to and during the first Gulf War)—meanwhile explained why a negotiated settlement to Iran’s nuclear program is highly preferable to the “military option.”

“Nobody believes that the use of force is a guaranteed, one-shot settlement of the problem of Iran’s nuclear program,” said Pickering, who co-runs the Iran Project, which promotes diplomacy between Iran and the United States, along with several other top foreign policy experts.

Pickering also argued that a deal would open the door to “further possibilities” for US-Iranian cooperation on a host of regional issues, most immediately in serving the president’s plan of “degrading and destroying” Islamic State (ISIS or IS) forces in Iraq and Syria and in bringing stability to Afghanistan.

“I remain optimistic,” he said, “but only on the basis of the fact that reasonable people could agree.”

Pickering argued that domestic politics in both countries could be the ultimate impediment to a final deal.

“The real problem is that there is a lot of unreasoned opposition, in both countries, that is affecting the situation,” he said.

On the American side, the “unreasoned opposition” Pickering referred to is rooted in Congress, where key members of the House and Senate advocate the Israeli government’s position that any deal should completely or almost completely dismantle Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, which would be a non-starter for the Islamic Republic.

Yet whereas Pickering was critical of Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu for having “overreached” last November in calling last year’s interim Joint Plan of Action (JPOA) a “historic mistake,” Eizenstat suggested that his hardline stance may actually have toughened the P5+1’s (US, UK, Russia, China, France plus Germany) resolve to minimize Iran’s enrichment program as much as possible.

But Uzi Eilam, the former director general of the Israeli Ministry of Defense Mission to Europe, argued that Netanyahu is “getting used” to the idea that Iran will retain some enrichment capacity under a comprehensive deal.

A deal that includes stringent monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and a third party (Russian) commitment to process Iran’s enriched uranium into fuel and assume responsibility for spent reactor fuel would be enough to meet Israeli security concerns even with an active Iranian enrichment program, said Eilam.

Pickering also noted that sanctions relief remains a sticking point, with the Iranians wanting full relief immediately and the P5+1 insistent on maintaining some sanctions in order to ensure Iran’s continued compliance with the terms of the final accord. But he was joined by Eizenstat in arguing that it would be “almost impossible” (Eizenstat’s words) for both sides to just walk away from the talks at this point.

While both Iran and the P5+1 continue to insist that they are focused on reaching a comprehensive accord by the deadline, with just three days to go, it appears highly unlikely.

As to how long the talks would go on in the event of an extension, Pickering argued that “short-term would be better than long-term,” though he acknowledged that “short-term is harder to get because everybody’s tired, they want to go home and think.”

Eizenstat added that the impending political change in Washington, where Republicans will take control of the Senate in January and are expected to oppose any deal with Iran, would make a short extension more desirable than a long-term one.

Within a few days we will know whether President Obama’s efforts to negotiate an agreement with Iran over the latter’s nuclear power ambitions have proven successful or not and, if final compromises are not reached, whether the talks can be continued. The tens of thousands of words devoted to these efforts by negotiators over the last year have naturally focused on the details of an agreed protocol on the number of operating centrifuges in Iran and the pace of sanctions relief.

The president has invested much political capital into this endeavor and the failure to reach a final accord could end his aim of trying to alter the political and military balance of power in the Middle East. The effort has been so arduous and controversial that he has very carefully avoided a full explication of his strategic aims. The recent letter he reportedly sent to Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei—the full text of which has not been released—in which he is said to have suggested working together in battling Islamic State forces in Iraq and Syria, might be the closest we could get to Obama’s reasoning.

The long freeze in US-Iranian affairs is softening but where that process is headed is yet to be determined. The election last year of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and the delegation of authority to him of testing US intent by the supreme leader reflects not only the pressures of broad economic sanctions but also the slight easing of revolutionary strictures, as well as the shared concern by both countries that events were threatening to run out of control. The US policy of aligning with Israel and the Sunni monarchies has long required adjusting, and President Obama has taken on that initiative with Iran in mind.

Every area of the globe presents a complex mix of old and new frictions, serious and minor conflicts of interests, and the rise of new and challenging issues that further the sense of confusion and helplessness. More than anywhere else, the Middle East evades a clear US strategy or a broad domestic political consensus on clear, rational, and practical interests. In the Middle East the United States contends today with the consequences of its failure to bring democratic governments to old societies; the rise of well-armed militias based in part on extremist Islam; severe tensions between political and religious divisions within Islam; waves of anti-western and anti-American sentiment; the regional antagonism to the close US-Israeli relationship; and the regional efforts to adjust the political boundaries of a post-Ottoman world. American financial assistance to the Sunni militias from the Arab monarchies has meanwhile created a monster that defies our interests.

The Bush administration’s efforts to cope with new and old adversaries and challenges typically were military—the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Both have had, charitably, very limited success and have further distorted the political landscape. At the moment, there is no recognizable and acceptable balance of power, no consensus on limits of national rights and no regional institutions to cope with shared questions.

President Obama has recognized this hapless and dangerous condition and accordingly tried to adjust American policies in the region. He has tried to withdraw militarily from Iraq and Afghanistan while pursuing a more diplomatic posture, starting with the Israel-Palestine conflict. Until recently this year, he was also reluctant to engage militarily in Syria, having understood that the collapse of the country’s government would introduce an array of additional threats to regional peace.

Ending the 35-year-long cold war with Iran has also been a top priority in Obama’s vision of America’s future, but resolving fears, both regional and domestic, over Iran’s putative ambitions for nuclear weaponry has been the prerequisite. Beyond allaying fears of regional nuclear proliferation is the hope that over time, a new relationship will constitute a path to political realignments—a new direction for us and the nations of the area.

Of course, the president still has to contend with his predecessors legacy in Iraq. Following the withdrawal of US forces in 2011, Obama repeatedly said that there would be no more US boots on the ground in that country, yet nearly all his military officers have been quoted saying that without ground forces, air power will be insufficient in thwarting the new militant force of Islamic State (ISIS or IS). If not us, then who? Turkey, the Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt? Wishful thinking; they are hardly equipped for the job.

Iraq, of course, has its own vision and demands. What is necessary is the very ephemeral realization of greater cooperation and coordination of those who recognize a common threat to their well being—if not their existence. Like it or not, Iran can play a significant part in the attempts to defeat IS and find an acceptable solution for Syria, which is currently the most affected by the rise of Islamic militancy.

Quarantining Syria makes little sense; it’s domestic politics may be loathsome but its leaders are not causing American casualties and losses. It may be time for a realistic debate over the role of Syria in its own defense and the struggles against IS and the other extremist forces ravaging the country.

Unfortunately, nothing is easy in the Middle East, and such initiatives will also continue to meet the strong opposition of American conservatives who do not trust Iran and are subject to lobbying pressure from Israel, the Sunni Arab states and Turkey. In this light, the reach for a greater rationality may simply prove impossible.

by François Nicoullaud

Paris, France—This is not the first time that we may have trapped ourselves when drafting UN Security Council (UNSC) resolutions that were intended to trap another country—in this case, Iran. The present situation recalls in some respects the period around 1997 when most Security Council members would have liked to rescind, or at least amend, the sanctions adopted against the regime of Saddam Hussein after the 1991 Gulf War, as their effects were obviously getting out of hand: widespread corruption, and the dramatic deterioration of the Iraqi population’s state of health, to name a couple. But any change in the sanctions would have required unanimity from the five permanent members of the Council, and that was definitely out of reach. The situation led French President Jacques Chirac to express his frustration. “We want to convince, not coerce,” he said. “I have never observed that the policy of sanctions can produce positive effects.”

We have not yet reached such a dramatic juncture with Iran. But should it become useful to rapidly lift the sanctions imposed by the four UNSC resolutions between 2006 and 2010 in order to secure a comprehensive agreement on Iran’s nuclear program, the Western negotiators may find themselves incapable of delivering and may instead try to kick the can down the road to some point in the distant future.

Aimed at halting Iran’s military, nuclear and ballistic activities, these UNSC resolutions are not the ones that hurt the most. More destructive are those unilateral measures imposed by the United States and the European Union, since they were designed essentially to destabilize the Iranian economy. But the UNSC sanctions carry with them a “pillory effect” that the Iranians perceive, quite correctly, as deeply humiliating. They also provide the legal bedrock upon which the European sanctions, in particular, have been constructed. The Iranians are therefore anxious to see them lifted as soon as possible through a decision by the Security Council to close the file it opened in 2006 and return it to the forum from which it should never have been taken: the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The conditions for terminating these resolutions, however, are also overwhelming. In fact, the people who drafted them seem to have been pursuing two not necessarily compatible goals at the same time.

The first goal was to pile up all the preconditions that the authors believed were necessary to prevent Iran from acquiring a deliverable nuclear device, including:

• suspending all activities related to enrichment and reprocessing, including research, development, and construction of new facilities;
• suspending all activities related to the construction of a heavy-water research reactor;
• providing immediate access to all sites, equipment, persons and documents requested by the IAEA in order to verify Iran’s compliance with the Security Council decisions and to resolve all outstanding issues related to the possible military dimensions (PMD) of the Iranian nuclear program;
• promptly ratifying the Additional Protocol to Iran’s safeguards agreement with the IAEA; and
• suspending all efforts to develop ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons.

Considering the context in which these resolutions were adopted, there was little chance that the Iranians would comply with such an elaborate and comprehensive set of so-called “confidence-building measures,” which would have forced Tehran to abandon virtually all of its nuclear and ballistic-missile ambitions.

The second goal was substantively quite different from the first and indeed somehow contradictory. It aimed to push Iran into negotiations, as illustrated by the formula that was included in all the UNSC sanctions resolutions, which ritually expressed the “conviction” that Iran’s compliance “would contribute to a diplomatic, negotiated solution.” Moreover, if Iran suspended its enrichment and reprocessing activities, the Council declared its willingness in return to suspend at least some of its sanctions in order “to allow for negotiations in good faith” and “reach an early and mutually acceptable outcome.”

As we now know, a negotiation process ultimately was initiated, albeit through a radically different path, as the West dropped its demand that Iran fully suspend all its sensitive nuclear activities before entering into substantive talks. One can therefore assume that the second goal will be accomplished as soon as a comprehensive agreement, which will hopefully emerge from the current round of talks in Vienna, enters into force, thus rendering this dimension of the UNSC’s resolutions totally obsolete.

But of course, the resolutions’ first dimension—the exhaustive inventory of “confidence-building measures”—remains in place. Because confidence is essentially an elusive and subjective feeling, taking this path involves embarking on a long-term, winding and always reversible road, the end of which is only faintly discernible now. Such a process is also hardly compatible with the “on-off” mechanism of the Security Council: there is no chance that its resolutions, once cancelled, could be reintroduced. Hence the strong reluctance of the Western powers to commit themselves to such an outcome.

We also all know that the sanctions are much easier to adopt than to rescind, as they tend to create, in the meantime, their own logic and dynamics. They develop new balances of power and vested interests, if only among those in authority who have dedicated themselves so thoroughly to the sanctions’ implementation and enforcement. One has only to recall the notorious example of the general embargo imposed by the Allies against Germany during the First World War whose continuation for several months after the 1918 Armistice unnecessarily prolonged the suffering of the German people and deepened the bitterness of their defeat.

Are Iran’s negotiating partners ready to learn the lessons of history? The Gordian knot that the UNSC sanctions represent should be slashed asunder, if not immediately upon the signing of a comprehensive agreement with Iran, then at least after a moderately short period in which Iran’s determination to comply with its terms could be confirmed. Such a gesture could also be linked appropriately to the formal ratification by Iran’s parliament of the Additional Protocol that Tehran had signed during an unsuccessful round of talks back in 2003—the two moves being equally irreversible.

This would not mean that pending requests made to Iran, such as the ancient issue of the “possible military dimensions” (PMD) of its nuclear program, would have to be abandoned. But it would mean that these requests would thenceforward be dealt with exclusively by the IAEA. It would also mean that the Council, in light of the progress achieved after the signing of a final deal, would no longer consider the Iranian situation a “threat to the peace” under the terms of the UN Charter’s Chapter VII, the only chapter that authorizes the use of coercive measures against a Member State in order “to maintain or restore international peace and security.”

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by Monica Byrne

Before I traveled to Iran, I didn’t want to read anything about Iran. Certainly nothing written by mainstream American news media, which often draws an absurdist caricature of the country. I wanted to arrive with an open heart.

But I knew that having an open heart wasn’t the same thing as an ignorant mind. I didn’t pretend to have more than a superficial knowledge of Iranian-American relations. I didn’t wish to gloss over the misdeeds of either country, including human rights abuses. I was just a writer, with three motivations:

1. Travel is essential to my writing;
2. I have Iranian friends in America who are passionate about their homeland, which made me curious; and
3. for their sake and mine, I want reconciliation between our countries.

No small task, of course. Not when people from both countries have been working toward that goal ever since the 1979 revolution ousted a pro-American monarch and replaced it with an Islamic Republic.

The revolution has impacted a whole generation of people in both Iran and America. But a new generation—including my friends and I—born after 1979, don’t have a memory of the revolution, or the occupation of the US Embassy in Tehran. There’s no case to be made for ignorance, but there is a case to be made for innocence: To us, the estrangement of Iran and America makes neither political nor intuitive sense. America’s simultaneous fidelity to Saudi Arabia and Israel feels odd and hypocritical. While I was in Iran, I asked my guide to explain the reason behind the sanctions. He couldn’t really explain it. I researched the sanctions. I couldn’t even explain them to myself. They just seemed pointless and arbitrary.

An older generation resigns itself to everything being the way it is. A younger generation questions why any of it has to be.

So where do we begin? And by “we,” I don’t mean the nation states; I mean “we” as individual citizens. Do we seek common ground? I’m not going to insult everyone’s intelligence by saying Iranians are just like Americans. That not only implies that Iranian lives only have value insofar as they resemble American ones; it also obscures our differences, including the religious orientations of our current governments, and the effects those orientations have on the public and private behavior of individual citizens. Those differences are real and important.

Yet those differences are not a real barrier to reconciliation. And as an American, I see the primary responsibility for reconciliation in America’s court. We are far more ignorant about, and hostile toward Iranians than Iranians are toward us. That is our shame. Are there people in Iran who chant “Death to America”? Sure, I guess, somewhere. I didn’t meet any of them. Are there people in America who can’t even locate Iran on a map? Yes. I meet them every day.

The good news is that both countries have made small acts of good faith over time, which then led to acts of good faith among individual citizens; my homeland became a home for people of Iranian origin and descent. They grew up in (or came to) America and made friends, including me. Those friendships then inspired me to travel to Iran.

Filming a documentary in a vineyard near Pasargade. From left to right: the director, Monica Byrne, Mohamad Shirkavand. Credit: Fars Television

While staying near the historical city of Pasargade, the final resting place of Cyrus the Great, I had a wonderful experience playing the part of an American tourist in a documentary that happened to be shooting near my guesthouse. The producers gave me a verse of Hafez, the great Persian poet, to say in Farsi:

Derakhte doosti benshan,
ke kame del be bar arad.

Which means:

Plant the tree of friendship,
and it will give the fruit of the heart’s desire. 

Even now, two weeks after leaving Iran, the line still resonates with me. I’m not a politician. I don’t have the ear of anyone in power. The negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program are not accessible to me. But travel and friendship: these are tools that are available to me. They’re also available to millions of Americans, especially after Hassan Rouhani—known inside Iran as a moderate cleric with reformist ambitions—was elected president last year. By travel I don’t mean joining a mindless mega-tour group, whose members don’t interact with anyone except through the viewfinder of their cameras. I mean travel as a mindful and radical act: to seek one-on-one consensual reconciliation of Other and Self, of mutual transformation that leaves both parties more perfectly themselves than they were before.

The Tomb of Hafez, Shiraz, Iran. Credit: Monica Byrne

The state will act at the level of the state, in Vienna or wherever. But individuals can act at the level of individuals, on American and Iranian soil: seeing and being seen, hearing and being heard, knowing and being known.

My last night in Iran, I went back to the Tomb of Hafez. The first time I’d gone was daytime, when tourists go; evening is when Iranians go.

The air was cool and electric. In the northeast corner of the courtyard, a square of rugs was set down for evening prayer. Up and down the steps of the tomb came students, artists, professors, pairs of women, pairs of men, parents with teenagers, parents with toddlers. A young couple—the girl wearing a scarf fashionably high on her head, the boy wearing all black, with a gold chain—walked up to the tomb and fidgeted there, unsure of how to behave. Some placed their fingers on the tomb, their lips moving. Others checked their smartphones, or took selfies. A man in a grey suit hovered by one of the columns, reciting Hafez to whoever would listen.

As per an Iranian tradition I’d read about, I circled the tomb seven times and then sat down, legs crossed, with my back to one of the pillars, and asked the question in my mind: How do Iran and America reconcile?

And then I opened my English translation of The Divan of Hafez, which my guide Mohamad had bought me as a gift. This was the first verse my eyes fell upon:

Joyous that day from when this desolate abode, I go:
The ease of soul, I seek: and for the sake of the Beloved I go.

The answer gave me chills.

But I didn’t have time to think more about it, because just then, the men who’d finished praying came to take a group picture on the steps of the tomb. They asked me where I was from, and like everyone who heard I was from America, were delighted and extremely welcoming. We could communicate very little, but they managed to tell me they were from nearby Estahban, a city famous for figs.

Our conversation drew onlookers. Soon it was a crowd of twenty or more. Someone asked if I spoke any Farsi. I got really excited because I remembered my line from the vineyard documentary, so I started:

Derakhte doosti benshan—

And the entire crowd finished it with me as if it were a song we’d long rehearsed.

—ke kame del be bar arad!

The man in the grey suit who’d been reciting Hafez behind us called “Yes! Yes! Thank you!” and rushed forward to pour peanuts and raisins into my hand.

A translator materialized; the crowd was now asking me why I’d come to Iran. “I want Iran and America to reconcile,” I said. Immediately applause broke out. “Tell your government!” someone called out. “I’m trying!” I said, waving my Moleskin. It felt like such a paltry gesture. But I have to believe that it was something. That these gestures of good faith would also come to bear fruit, like the gestures of good faith that had sent me there in the first place.

American news outlets often portray Iran as something like Mordor, the strange and unknown wasteland from J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth. The average American mostly follows suit. Now that I’ve been there, what can I say to that? Where can I even begin?

What I saw was a vast, gorgeous, brilliant country at the crossroads of the world, with an ancient culture seasoned by peoples from the north, south, east, and west who’d broken over Persia like waves for three thousand years. I fell in love with Hafez and the reverence of artists that his veneration represents. I fell in love with Iranian food (I’m rationing my remaining saffron sugar sticks like bars of gold). I fell in love with Iranian landscapes—Alamut, Abyaneh, Persepolis, Garmeh. I fell in love with Iranian places—the Zurkhaneh in Yazd, the homestay in Farahzad, the garden in Kashan. And Iranians themselves were unfailingly kind to me. How is it even possible that our peoples are still estranged? It makes no sense.

I spent my last night in Iran on the steps of Hafez’s tomb, talking. Men, women, mothers, fathers, teenagers, girls, boys, children—all eager to talk. A daughter translated, and a father filmed the impromptu interview. A son translated, and told me the meanings of all his family’s names. I ripped pages out of my Moleskin and wrote down my contact information for five, ten, twenty people; and got theirs in return. Blog, Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, Viber, Whatsapp, Instagram—we would find each other there (even if some of those applications are illegal in Iran). The men from Estahban returned with a handful of figs and poured them into my hand on top of the peanuts and raisins. My heart overflowed. I didn’t want to leave. In just thirty days, Iran had become beloved to me.

I’ll be back soon, inshallah. In the meantime, to every single American who is able, I echo Hafez:

For the sake of the Beloved, go.

Monica Byrne is a novelist, playwright, and traveler based in Durham, NC. Her first novel The Girl in the Road was published by Penguin Random House in May. She writes from home and abroad on her blog. (Featured Image: The doors at Takt-e Soileman, Iran. Credit: Monica Byrne.)

This article was first published by Lobelog and was reprinted here with permission. Copyright Lobelog.