Iran International
Supreme Leader’s Instagram post about a 7th century Imam’s peace with his enemy has caught media attention in Tehran as a possible sign of a nuclear compromise.
The post which was published on Ali Khamenei’s Persian Instagram Monday was an excerpt from a speech in April 1990 in which he discussed the reasons for the decision of the second Shiite Imam, Hassan ibn Ali, for making peace with his enemy, the founder and first caliph of the Umayyad Caliphate, Muawiya after ten years of war.
“Imam Hassan’s act was based on a logical argument which could not be disobeyed,” he had said in his speech and stressed that no one, even the first Imam, Ali ibn Abi Talib, who had not compromised with Muawiya’s father Abu Sufyan, would have chosen to take a different path under the circumstances of the time.
He also argued that Imam Hassan had taken the decision together with his brother, Hussein ibn Ali, the third Imam, who was later killed in a war with Muawiya’s forces in Karbala in 680 AD. Unlike Imam Hassan, the third Imam, is well known in Shiite history for being uncompromising toward the enemy, the Umayyads.
Khamenei also used the phrase “heroic flexibility” in the context of Iran's relations with the outside world in a very high-profile speech in September 2013 to Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) commanders.
In his speech he stressed that he was not opposed to “proper political moves in diplomacy”. The phrase came from Iraqi Shia scholar Razi Ale Yasin’s book, Sulh-ul Hassan, which Khamenei translated into Persian under the title “Imam Hasan’s Peace: The most Magnificent Heroic Flexibility in History” in 1969.
Iranian Shiite clerics and officials often use references to the early Islamic history, particularly the life and actions of the prophet and the twelve Imams, as well as the Quran and other religious texts, when they discuss current affairs which requires interpretation of their statements.
“I believe in what was dubbed as ‘heroic flexibility’ many years ago [in the book],” Khamenei told the IRGC, adding that flexibility in certain circumstances could be positive and even required. He also argued that showing flexibility for “technical reasons,” while not forgetting “who the opponent and enemy is” can help a wrestler manoeuvre in his match to win, in the same way that the Imam's decision saved him and his followrs.
The media in Tehran have highlighted the Instagram post without any comments or interpretation on Tuesday, seeing its possible significance in the current political and international climate. But unlike 2013, when they immediately picked up the mention of “heroic flexibility” in the Leader’s speech and interpreted it as a sign of his consent to a nuclear deal, this time they have refrained from commenting.
Khamenei withheld his blessing to make a deal to restore the 2015 agreement between Iran and the world powers from the administration of President Hasan Rouhani, apparently fearing that credit for removal of US sanctions could help Rouhani and his allies to win in the June 2021 presidential elections against their hardliner rivals.
Rouhani has repeatedly claimed his government could have restored the deal if its path had not been blocked by powerful centres of power such as the hardline dominated parliament which passed legislation in December 2020 requiring the expansion of Iran’s nuclear program.
In September 2021, Truss, just appointed foreign secretary, sat down quietly with her Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir-Abdollahian on the sidelines of the United Nations general assembly. Truss reportedly assured Amir-Abdollahianthat London was serious about repaying the £400 million debt owed by Britain since the 1970s for undelivered weapons.
Truss had told senior civil servants on promotion to the foreign office days earlier, moved by Prime Minister Boris Johnson from international trade secretary, that her “number one priority” was securing the release of three Britons detained in Iran – Nazanin Zeghari-Ratcliffe, Anoosheh Ashoori and Morad Tahbaz.
Richard Ratcliffe, husband of Zeghari-Ratcliffe who was freed along with Ashoori March 2002, praised Truss in a July newspaper article. “Despite me camping angrily on her doorstep, and our sometime fractious relationship, she delivered on her promise to us to get Nazanin home,” Ratcliffe wrote. “After five foreign secretaries, that matters. She did the one thing everyone knew would work: she paid the UK’s debt.”
Not everyone was pleased. Mike Pompeo, who as secretary of state under President Donald Trump launched maximum pressure as the US left the 2015 Iran nuclear deal condemned the £400 million ($460 million) payment as “blood money.”
Truss has a long record of pragmatism. President of the Oxford University Liberal Democrats when a student, she was opposed the UK leaving the European Union (EU) during the 2016 referendum but later became a ‘Brexiteer.’
‘Not dealing with a perfect world’
Pressed in a House of Commons committee in June, Truss fielded a question on human rights in the Arab Gulf states. “We are not dealing with a perfect world,” she said. “We are dealing in a world where we have to make difficult decisions…”
As foreign secretary, Truss has worked along with the Biden administration in line with the British and European policy of reviving the 2015 nuclear deal, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action). Along with French and German counterparts, she has increasingly placed the onus to Iran to make compromises as the talks have become US-Iran contacts, mediated by the European Union, since Vienna multilateral meetings between Iran and six world powers paused in March.
Hopes for the talks have risen and fallen in recent weeks. In comments made Monday to reporters in Brussels, Josep Borrell, head of EU foreign policy, said he was “less confident today than 28 hours before on the convergence of the negotiation process,” and that without convergence, “the whole process is in danger.”
Borrell: Nuclear talks ‘in danger’
While France and Germany, and the European Union, may look to Truss to hold the UK’s current position, Monday’s news that Truss had been elected leader of the British Conservative Party and therefore prime minister designate, prompted celebrations among many conservative commentators.
“To leave the past few years of Chamberlain Conservatism and reclaim Churchill’s mantle, Truss must act boldly from day one to break the FCO’s [foreign office] hold on No 10 [the prime minister’s residence],” tweeted Richard Goldberg, senior advisor to the Federation for Defense of Democracies. In calling Johnson an ‘appeaser,’ Goldberg referred to Neville Chamberlain, British prime minister 1937-40, who explored options for stopping Nazi Germany short of war.
‘No need to tread on eggshells’
Nile Gardiner, director of the Margaret Thatcher Centre for Freedom at Heritage Foundation and frequent contributor to Fox News, wrote August 31 that Truss would challenge the Biden administration over aspects of US foreign policy, “such as its weakness on Iran.” Truss, wrote Gardiner, would “not be afraid to take on the liberal establishment at home and abroad.”
The Daily Telegraph ran a leader August 28 headlined ‘Truss must bloc Iran deal,’ which it said was “likely to offer at best nothing more than a trivial delay to the ayatollahs’ atomic ambitions, even as it unlocks cash likely to fund attacks against the very Western governments which sign up.” With Zeghari-Ratcliffe freed, the paper opined, “there is no need to tread on eggshells.”
Towards the end of the Conservative leadership election, United Against Nuclear Iran speculated in the US that her rival Rishi Sunak’s “domestic emphasis on Britain’s finances might sway him toward a pro-trade rationale and attendant support for the JCPOA…A Sunak government would suggest a continuation of his former boss’s [Boris Johnson] Iran policy: ongoing support for the JCPOA as a ‘least bad’ option to restrain and possibly moderate Iran in the long term.”
Among other JCPOA opponents, Israel Prime Minister Yair Lapid congratulated Truss as “my new friend, a true friend of Israeli.” The Jerusalem Post, highlighting Lapid and Truss overlapping as foreign ministers, cited “sources close” to the Israeli prime minister that Truss “has shown an understanding of the threat Tehran poses to the Jewish state and is closer to Israel’s view on Iran’s prevarications in the talks.”