Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 17
By Azer Ahmadbayli – Trend:
Why US President Donald Trump has taken the “decertify” decision of Iran’s technical compliance with the nuclear deal just now?. Not 3 months ago, not 3 months later.
Something has changed or is about to be changed in several days or weeks in the region. Possible answers - the end of ISIS, end of war in Syria, and thus time is coming to figure out who will rule over Syria, what the post-war political landscape will be, and so on.
One of Washington's principal aims regarding Syria is to make Iran’s official advisers and unofficial proxies get away, to completely disable Tehran from participating in the post-war decision taking and accordingly to tear off Syria from Iran’s influence.
Defense Minister of Israel Avigdor Liberman said yesterday that Israel will take military action against Iran and its proxies if they attempt to entrench themselves along the Syrian border with Israel.
“… We will not allow Iran and Hezbollah to turn Syrian territory into a forward operating base against Israel. We also will not allow the transfer of advanced weaponry by Iran, through Syria to Lebanon,” Liberman said.
His words, for the most part, explain the US-Iran approach over Syria.
President Trump handed in the issue to the US Congress, giving Iran time to break off any political and military support to the Syrian regime; otherwise sanctions suspended by the deal, will most likely be applied again.
Another question is begging to be asked: should Europe support sanctions if they are to be re-imposed? The answer is no. Europe will be made to do it.
“I urge our allies to join us in taking strong actions to curb Iran's continued dangerous and destabilizing behavior,” Trump said.
“However, in the event we are not able to reach a solution working with Congress and our allies, then the agreement will be terminated,” he said.
So far, most of the leading European banks still remain reluctant to establish ties with Iranian counterparts due to concerns over the US sanctions. There are many memorandums of understanding signed between a great number of European companies and Tehran in different fields, but most of them still remain on paper.
Many Iranians say they don’t feel any change for the better in the post-sanctions time. International money transfer for common Iranians and money transactions for Iranian businessmen are still quite complicated and sometimes impossible.
These signs tell more than optimistic statements of European policy makers about keeping the nuclear deal safe. They mean that Europe has to reckon with the US position much more than one can conceive.
The final question is how Iran will act.
Since 1979, when the Islamic Revolution happened, there were only two cases when Iran stepped back from its previously occupied tough position.
The first case occurred in 1988 during Iran-Iraq war, when the Iranian leadership (particularly the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in 1982) being in the firm belief that Iran having three times more population than its adversary (40 million against 14 million), would go ahead and displace Saddam’s regime, was warned that the Iran-Iraq War could not be won.
In 1988 a group of military commanders tried to prove to the Supreme Leader that Iran has no sufficient power to continue the war for many reasons the main being scarcity in advanced offensive weapons due to international embargo put on Iran in 1980 in regard with US hostage crisis.
In addition, Iraq was strongly supported by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait funding it with billions of US dollars to purchase modern armament. There were also some other circumstances being not in favor of Iran, with lack of war experience being one of them.
By 1988, the Islamic Republic was exhausted by long and bloody war, in which Iran suffered much greater losses than Iraq.
That time Ayatollah Khomeini re-considered the issue and signed resolution 598 to end the war.
The second time Iranian leadership decided to compromise in 2015, when burden of sanctions became utterly hard, heavily damaging national economy and leaving little chance for the country’s progress.
This time another Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, made a decision to negotiate with the West, calling people to demonstrate “heroic flexibility”. This decision ended with the sides signing the well-known JCPOA.
In both cases there were only a few moves for Iran on the chessboard, all leading to endangering the regime.
Now we have to witness next act of Iranian drama and how it will unfold.
Yesterday, Ali Larijani, the speaker of the Iranian parliament, said that Tehran prepared a special action plan if the United States leave the nuclear deal and that Washington would strongly regret its decision.