Negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 (U.S, U.K., France, Russia, China and Germany) failed to reach an agreement by the Nov. 24 deadline. Instead, the negotiations were extended by seven months, to June 2015.
Western media coverage of the negotiations predominantly depicts Iran as hardline and unwilling to make concessions. However, the main impediment to reaching an agreement has been the harsh demands made of Iran. And despite the appearance of an international coalition, the real force behind the P5+1 is the United States, with Russia and China serving mainly as mediators and France, Germany and the U.K. toeing the Washington line.
Why does Iran want an agreement?
There is no doubt that the Iranian leadership is eager to reach an agreement. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who has taken a hard line in the negotiations, acknowledged that the Iranian side demonstrated “a will to find an agreement I hadn’t felt in the past.”
It is equally clear that Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif, during his months of intense negotiations, has had the support of not just the president but also that of the Supreme Leader Khamenei.
President Rouhani was elected in 2013 on the explicit campaign promise of brokering an agreement with the U.S. and its allies. He just reiterated his commitment to this approach by saying, “Our logic is that of negotiation and interaction with the world.” Long before being elected president, Rouhani was at the forefront of attempting to reach a deal with the United States.
In October 2003, when Rouhani was the chief nuclear negotiator under President Khatami, Iran announced a voluntary temporary suspension of uranium enrichment. Iran also agreed to the “Additional Protocol,” which allows IAEA inspectors surprise, unannounced access to Iran’s nuclear sites. But the huge unilateral concessions received no real response from the U.S.
At the time, the United States was unwilling to set aside its goal of regime change. The Bush administration had Iran in its crosshairs, next in line for an invasion after Iraq. There was no reason to negotiate when regime change seemed within reach. The strong and heroic resistance of the Iraqi people to the occupation forced Washington to put its subsequent invasion plans on hold.
Iran’s eagerness to reach a deal has nothing to do with any fairness in the negotiating process and the demands. These are not negotiations between two comparable adversaries working on the terms of future relations and trade. Iran can do nothing to the imperialist alliance that is lined up against it. But the U.S. and its junior partners have imposed extreme hardship on the Iranian people, essentially locking Iran out of international trade.
The sanctions do not just deprive Iran from trading with the U.S., which would have had a negligible effect on Iran’s economy. The U.S. sanctions extra-territorially punish foreign companies and states for trading with Iran. Few companies or states are willing to take the risk of trading with Iran even within the tight confines of trade permitted by the sanctions.
As a result, Iran’s economy has suffered huge losses. According to Obama administration figures, if the sanctions had not been imposed, Iran’s economy today would have been 25 percent larger than what it is today. Even if these numbers are exaggerated by the Obama administration in an attempt to placate foreign policy hawks, there is no doubt about the harm that the sanctions have brought.
Immediately following the imposition of the sanctions, inflation skyrocketed, the currency plummeted, and life became much harder, particularly for the working class. Prior to the U.S. oil sanctions that were imposed in July 2012, Iran exported 2.5 million barrels of oil per day. Under the sanctions, oil exports dropped to about 1 million barrels a day. The very limited sanctions relief offered Iran in November 2013 has only allowed oil exports to climb back up to 1.28 million barrels per day. But even that moderate rebound in oil sales is misleading. The funds from that increase do not go to Iran but into accounts out of Iran’s control. Only if the sanctions are lifted would Iran gain access to these funds.
The sanctions do more than impose economic hardship. Iran has been unable to import many essential products, including medicines and medical supplies. The sanctions have also had a direct effect on political developments in Iran. They directly contributed to the easy election of President Hassan Rouhani in the first round, without the need for a runoff. The hardships caused by the sanctions moved the majority of the electorate to vote for the candidate they felt had the best chance of ending them. From the imperialist perspective, the election of the most conciliatory faction of the Islamic Republic was a positive development.
Aside from its foreign policy,the Rouhani cabinet has also shifted away from Ahmadinejad’s economic policies, which aimed to provide some benefits to working people and the poor. Rouhani’s economic policies are in the direction of a more market-oriented approach. Still, while Iran’s leadership has been willing to make significant concessions, it has stopped short of a capitulation and is insisting on moderate demands. Among these demands are Iran’s right to produce fuel for its nuclear power plant and to receive significant sanctions relief earlier in the process, as opposed to the U.S. offer of lifting sanctions only after more significant cutbacks to its nuclear program are made.
Why does the Obama administration seek a negotiated settlement?
The biggest difference between the current negotiations and the previous ones over the last decade is that the Obama administration does, in fact, want to reach an agreement. Of course, Obama wants to extract maximum concessions from Iran, but it has had to make concessions of its own, including accepting uranium enrichment and nuclear activities, albeit in an extremely limited way.
Over the last year, the Obama administration, and much of the corporate media, have also stepped back from the claim that Iran already has a nuclear weapons program, a claim harder to support now with the expansion of UN inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities. Instead, they are now emphasizing keeping Iran away from a “nuclear breakout option,” meaning that Iran should be prevented from being able to build nuclear weapons should it one day decide to do so. A nuclear-armed country demanding that another be kept away from even the possibility of developing nuclear weapons is the height of hypocrisy. However, it is a tacit U.S. acknowledgment that Iran does not currently have a nuclear weapons program.
The Obama administration and some in the imperialist foreign policy establishment, the so-called realists, realize that regime change in Iran is not a realistic option in the short term. They do not see a ground invasion as a realistic option. Not only was the invasion of Iraq extremely costly, but it failed to produce Washington’s desired result, a stable client state. Iran has several times the size and population of Iraq, making a U.S. invasion of Iran prohibitive. Additionally, the failure of the “Green Revolution” in 2009 for the time being put an end to Washington’s dream of the overthrow of the Islamic Republic by a right-wing opposition.
From this perspective, if the Islamic Republic cannot be overthrown, the next best option is to use the sanctions to impose harsh conditions and ultimately huge concessions. An Iran reliant on relations with the West and led by a conciliatory political faction is less likely to pose a serious obstacle to the hegemonic aims of U.S. imperialism.
Will the regime-change policy return?
But this view is not shared by all factions of the imperialist establishment. Most Republicans and some Democrats in Congress have been opposed to real negotiations with Iran all along. With the negotiations dragging on, and the Republican victory in the November elections, these voices have grown stronger. Already, several members of Congress have indicated that they would introduce legislation for additional sanctions on Iran. In the incoming Congress, such legislation is likely to pass, and has a chance to even get a two-thirds vote, which would override Obama’s possible veto.
The foreseeable and intended effect of additional sanctions on Iran would be to end the negotiations. It would be a return to the “all options are on the table” policy. A bombing or other forms of military attack on Iran, an “option” that Obama has never taken off the table, might be pushed to the forefront once again, along with the hopes of the overthrow of the state through a more complete strangulation of the economy. And this lays bare the character of imperialist foreign policy. The best the imperialists will offer an independent state is negotiating while holding a gun to its head. But even negotiating while imposing economic ruin is a courtesy that may not be extended for long.
Developments in the Middle East over the last decade, culminating in the rise of the so-called Islamic State and its control over a vast territory in Iraq and Syria, demonstrate the limits of U.S. power. However, the imperialist establishment may not necessarily come to accept those limits. In the case of Iran, this may take the form of extending the sanctions and imposing more hardship on the Iranian people in hopes of a collapse of the government.
As the U.S. has resumed the bombing of Iraq in its war against IS, an escalation of the U.S. military campaign in the region is a real danger. The U.S. capitalist class may or may not eventually reap the benefits from such an escalation in the form of unrestricted control over raw materials and investment opportunities. But whatever the outcome, the U.S. working class will bear the costs. The U.S. anti-war movement should be vigilant that sanctions, political and economic intervention, bombings, and invasions are all different tools used by the imperialist establishment to serve the strategic interests of the banks and corporations.
U.S. hands off Iran!
