Azerbaijan, Baku, Dec.14 / Trend, T. Konyayeva /
Director of the Russian Center for Public Policy Research Vladimir Yevseyev believes that Iranian foreign minister's dismissal can be attributed to the failures in foreign policy which Islamic Republic has suffered before the latest talks in Geneva rather than negotiating process.
"Dismissal of Mottaki should be communicated with those failures in foreign policy, which Iran got before the talks [in Geneva]. I think that problems with the negotiations are not an important reason to dismiss the head of the MFA for Iranian authorities, because, in fact, now there are talks about negotiations for the sake of negotiations", Yevseyev told Trend over telephone from Moscow.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad signed a decree to dismiss Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki on Monday, the presidental official website reported. Mottaki has served as foreign minister for seven years. He was appointed to this post during Ahmadinejad's first term.
Iran and the 5+1 group (the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France, and Germany) held talks in Geneva from December 6 to 7. The two sides agreed that the next round of talks will be held in late January in Istanbul.
Yevseyev called impossibility to prevent the imposition of unilateral sanctions by the U.S., the EU and its allies, and disruption of delivery of five battalions of Russian S-300 PMU-1 as the latter serious failures in the foreign policy of Tehran.
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"The imposition of sanctions against Iran is a serious blunder of the Iranian Foreign Ministry, they are quite rigid and their impact is obvious, despite the inverse assurances by the Iranian side", he said.
Following the adoption of Resolution No. 1929 in June by the U.N. Security Council, the U.S. Congress passed a bill on unilateral anti-Iran sanctions on June 24.
Later, in July this year, EU leaders, and later foreign ministers, proposed additional sanctions against Iran at the Brussels meeting. On Oct. 25, the foreign ministers of all EU countries approved additional sanctions against Iran at a meeting in Luxembourg.
On Sept. 22, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed a decree banning the transfer of S-300 missiles, armored vehicles, combat aircrafts, helicopters and ships to Iran. This is envisaged by a presidential decree on measures to implement UN Security Council resolution 1929 dated June 9, 2010.
The contract to supply Iran with five battalions of S-300 PMU-1 was signed in late 2007. The deal amounted to $800 million.
In addition, China's accession to the UN Security Council sanctions against Iran, according to Yevseyev, was Iranian leadership's big miscalculation.
Russia and China, which previously opposed the introduction of new tough measures against Iran, and urged a diplomatic solution, have joined the United States, Britain, France and Germany in supporting the IAEA resolution, insisting, however, to conduct a strategy of "dual path" involving a combination of sanctions and negotiations toward Iran.
Moreover, Russian expert believes that decline in exports of Iranian oil to China could also classified as the fault of Minister.
"Reducing of the "Black gold" supply in China has led to the fact that Iran at the first time ran into a problem where it will sell oil. There is no alternative source for Iran instead of China; firstly, for investment and secondly, for technologies. Any deterioration in relations with China could lead to problems in Iran."
In January-February, Iran's oil supplies to China decreased by 40 percent compared to the same period of 2009. According to the customs agencies of China, in January-February oil imports from Iran decreased by more than 37 percent compared to the same period of 2009. Thus, Iran ranked the fourth, giving its place to Russia.
According to Yevseyev, the main problem of the frequent staff changes in Iran is that the Iranian leadership unable to commensurate its ambitions with the real situation in the country.
"The policy of the Iranian leadership is very unpredictable; there are frequent changes in personnel. There is no clear understanding of how to implement the policy which the leadership generates, because the policy does not always have a real basis for implementation", he said.
Yevseyev supposes that, ultimately, failing to realize the posed global challenges, Iranian leadership begins to look for guilty, and it is the easiest to accuse the head of the Foreign Ministry, because he is responsible for foreign policy.
"But this does not solve the problem, because he conducted the course that was determined by the leadership and which does not quite match the reality. It demonstrates that the authorities of the country misunderstood the situation in which Iran turned out because of its own mistakes", he said.
The policy of Iranian leadership should be commensurate with the actual resources and capacity of the state, Yevseyev believes.