Baku, Azerbaijan, May 31
By Azer Ahmadbayli – Trend:
What does Tehran mean when it menacingly states it can re-launch nuclear fuel enrichment cycle within only four or five days if the EU signatories fail to keep terms of the nuclear deal and meet Iran's demands – will Iran do this to continue development of peaceful atomic technologies or to get nuclear weapons?
Tehran has repeatedly stated that Iran never sought to produce nuclear weapons. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei even issued a fatwa (religious directive) that prohibits it. However, Iran has technologies that can be used to produce nuclear weapons. In other words, Iran is a few steps away from the possibility of having an A-bomb.
One has to admit that there is an ambiguity – no one can definitely say that Iran today has a military nuclear program, just as no one can say the contrary.
European politicians are confident that the possible collapse of the nuclear deal will lead to the creation of nuclear weapons by Iran. They do not trust in the statements of Tehran and openly talk about it.
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said, for instance, that Europe remained very united in supporting the nuclear deal with Iran because it feared a proliferation of atomic weapons on its doorstep. Scrapping the deal would allow Iran to resume its nuclear program and this would “massively jeopardize” Europe’s security, Maas said.
British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson was more cynical and sincere. Explaining his support for the deal, he said it was not based on trust about Iran's intentions but on tough verification, including measures that allow IAEA unprecedented access to Iran's nuclear program.
Perhaps, their French counterpart thinks alike.
Before signing the 2015 nuclear deal, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu repeatedly issued warnings for the former US President Obama not to trust conciliatory gestures from Iran’s leadership.
“What Khamenei is saying, I’ll make some tactical concessions . . . some minor concessions, give you some nuclear material, but maintain the necessary material of low-enriched uranium, by which I can make a bomb . . . and the machines to make it," said Netanyahu. “No way. We’re not gullible. We’re not fools.”
And as President Trump says: “At the heart of the deal was a giant fiction.”
Iranians don’t fall behind.
“I said many times from the first day: don't trust America. Now it has been said that the deal will continue with the three European countries (France, Germany and Britain). But I don’t trust these European countries either,” Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said during his speech on the US withdrawal from JCPOA.
A member of Iran’s clerical elite said Europeans could not be trusted after President Hassan Rouhani said Tehran would remain in the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers even after the United States pulled out, according to Reuters. "America cannot do a damn thing. They have always been after the toppling of Iran’s regime and this exit is in line with that aim," Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami said in a televised address to worshipers at the Tehran University.
"These European signatories to the deal also cannot be trusted ... Iran’s enemies cannot be trusted," Khatami said, as hardline protesters urged the government not to “repeat the same mistake” by re-entering negotiations.
In a speech published on the presidential website, President of the Islamic Republic Hassan Rouhani said: “People must not be worried at all; we knew from long ago that Trump cannot be trusted.”
“The JCPOA does not rely on trust – it is rooted in the most far-reaching inspections and verification regime ever negotiated in an arms control deal,” former US President Barack Obama said commenting on Trump’s decision to withdraw from the deal.
You must have seen "The Hateful Eight" by Quentin Tarantino and remember what was the main sense all the characters were driven by – suspicion and mistrust.
The movie, in my opinion, is a suitable illustration of what is happening around the fate of JCPOA (the nuclear deal with Iran).
Each character is a potential killer or poisoner. All hate or despise each other; everyone has its motive and will do everything to survive. And the hut, in which the characters take shelter from the snow storm, gradually becomes too cramped for emotions. You might remember how the film ended.
It seems that the substance, the nuclear deal is made of, has been originally and entirely woven out of mistrust.
And is there someone to claim that something will come of this? As they say, “without trust there is no reason to continue.”