Has the Government Lost Hope in the Lifting of Sanctions?

About a year ago when Hassan Rouhani was campaigning for his election he introduced his main policy goal to be the resolution of the nuclear crisis as soon as possible through talks with the West and the lifting of international sanctions against Iran. Just yesterday, a right hand man of Iran’s foreign minister asserted that if Tehran did not reach an agreement with the world powers no “catastrophe” would follow.

Speaking at a seminar on the country’s nuclear policy, Abbas Araghchi, a member of Iran’s nuclear negotiations team said, “There would be no catastrophe if we did not reach an agreement.”

The reasoning of foreign minister Mohammad Zarif’s deputy is that if a final agreement is not reached in the nuclear talks, Iran would “resume its nuclear program, and they (the West) would resume its sanctions.” He added that under such a scenario, the negative atmosphere against the Islamic republic would never be lifted.

But these words are in contrast to what many international observers believe, which is that if the current talks fail, not only will existing sanctions continue with greater severity, but the possibility of a military involvement by Israel or the US with the purpose of destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities would rise significantly.

Araghchi is focusing on the view of ayatollah Khamenei about the sanctions being “ineffective” rather than Rouhani’s view during his campaign when he emphasized the effect of sanctions on the lives of Iranians when he also said his priority would be to remove them. Araghchi has conceded that the sanctions have created pressure on the regime but they have “are not as crippling as the other side claims and they have not brought the regime or the people to their knees. Under the new circumstances, there is no reason to believe there will be more hardships.”

Last month president Rouhani told CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour that he disagreed with her assessment that it was the sanctions that pushed Iran to the negotiations table. “The sanctions have not brought us to our knees and never will,” he said. These words are reminiscent of what ayatollah Khamenei had said in May: “Governments should know that Iran will not be brought to its knees because the Iranian nation is alive.”

Rouhani however has used the word “evil” for the sanctions and has said that we must “remove the evil sanctions to protect our national interest.”

Araghchi’s remarks come after the two negotiating parties failed to reach a settlement on the nuclear issue in the first six months of talks, resulting in an agreement to extend the talks till this November. The leaders in Iran and in the US have acknowledged diminishing chances of success in the talks. President Obama for example recently told New York Times that there was less than 50 percent chance of reaching a permanent resolution with Iran over the nuclear issue. He explained that some Iranian officials were concerned that such an agreement would reduce their power and influence in the country.

Last week, ayatollah Khamenei too said that relations with the US would not bring any benefits. According to him, American animosity and sanctions against Iran have increased.

But the oil sanctions have been the main cause of the economic decline since 2001 till today. The US along with its Western allies have asked countries and international companies to stop their oil purchases from Iran or at the least reduce them significantly, otherwise they would be excluded from being allowed to invest in Western markets. This policy paid off and Iran’s oil exports dropped from 2.2 barrels a day to less than 700,000 barrels. These sanctions along with government mismanagement and corruption pushed the value of the Rial to its lowest, causing hyperinflation for all domestic and imported goods.

Araghchi’s remarks about the non-catastrophic nature of the sanctions come as the US continues to strictly monitor the sanctions regime it has created. Diplomacy Iran, an Iranian website run by Sadegh Kharazi wrote that the state of New York had fined the auditing firm of Price Waterhouse Coopers 25 million Dollars for violating the sanctions by cooperating with a Japanese bank to bypass the anti-Iran sanctions. European governments too continue to fully enforce the sanctions, despite some law suits challenging their legality.