The Nuclear Deal and its Enduring Uncertainties Charles Elias Chartouni/February 23/2021 شارل الياس شرتوني/الصفقة النووية وشكوكها المستمرة
Engaging the Iranian regime in negotiations is a tedious exercise which tests the nerves and ability to cope with the corrosive effects of deliberate ambiguity, dissembling, indeterminate and shifting goals.
The painstakingly negotiated 2015 agreement rather than inaugurating a dynamic of gradual normalization and multilateral cooperation, ended up being instrumentalized for destabilization purposes, arms racing and unleashing a spate of wrestling imperialisms.
Cashing and feeding on the pitfalls of the failed Arab springs and their cascading State failures, the Iranian regime has worked its way towards a strategy of systemic sabotaging throughout the Middle East, which paired the destructive nihilism of Sunni radicalism, and contributed to the creation of the congenial embedding for endemic instability and entrenched chaos.
Notwithstanding the fact that the successful and laborious negotiations of 2015 were marred by vocal opposition, double speak and cynical insinuations emitted by the regime’s hardliners, and featured by a policy of bloody internal repression and clampdown on cultural liberalization.
The Iranian regime is turning to the erstwhile playbook of prevarication, unstructured negotiations, and playing on New Cold War rivalries, while pursuing the course of deliberate geopolitical destabilization and internal political repression.
The review of the Iranian negotiations methodology displays their unmistakable hallmark, the stalling and delaying tactics along which they proceed: they are asking for the lifting of financial and economic sanctions and the resumption of global oil trade, while juggling power rivalries (USA vs EU, China, Russia), wreaking havoc throughout the Middle East (Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Bahrain….), putting at stake Israel’s and the GCC strategic security, pursuing arms race (conventional and nuclear), and refusing to resume back negotiations on the very basis of reviewed priorities and a comprehensive lineup.
One wonders what would be the ultimate objective of the Iranian negotiations aside from the regime’s survival, the endorsement of its expansionist drive regionally, domestic brutal repression, and discretionary relationships with the international community.
These equivocations have undermined the nuclear accord of 2015, and raised serious questions about the Iranian regime willingness to normalize, and engage disarmament and conflict resolution politics in a volatile Middle East.
The chances of diplomacy are dim as long as the political narrative doesn’t change, the dystopian delusions perpetuate, and the vested interests of the Mollah, guardians of the revolution and Bazaar merchants perpetuate the foreclosures, and stymie the tidal wave of irreversible liberalization of the Iranian civil society.
The rejection of democratization on the domestic side is corollary to the repudiation of outward normalization and accounts for the perpetuating stalemates and the inability of diplomacy to break down walls.
The stonewalling tactics of the Hezbollah and its acolytes in Lebanon and the Middle East testify to the predatory nature of Iranian power politics, the delusions of a Counter-World Order, and its felonious and psychotic framing.
