Iran International
Islamic Republic's hardliner officials and media say President Ebrahim Raisi’s state visit this week to China “defeated the project to isolate Iran”.
“The Iranian president’s visit to Beijing was made at a time when western powers, with the help of some misled elements, were trying to isolate Iran in the international community. This visit ruined the enemies’ plans and defeated the project of isolating Iran,” Moslem Salehi, a member of the parliament’s economic committee told the official news agency (IRNA) Saturday.
Moslemi also said Iran can “challenge the unilateralism of the United States” as an influential country alongside Russia and China and argued that Beijing’s cooperation with Tehran at this juncture is proof of Iran's “political stability”.
As Iran's protest movement enters its sixth month, European powers are increasingly sending strong signals that they no longer consider diplomacy a viable route in their dealings with the Islamic Republic, without fundamental changes in Tehran’s policies.
In the latest development, the Islamic Republic not only lost an invitation to the Munich Security Conference, but also had to witness the presence of the Iranian opposition figures, most notably the exiled crown prince, Reza Pahlavi, who was a speaker at the conference. In an unattributed commentary Saturday, the official news agency (IRNA) slammed the exclusion of Iran, and its strategic ally Russia, from the conference.
Pro-government officials claim that tighter relations with China and Russia will balance out the pressure from the US and European powers. “To counter these pressures we need breathing space to be able to manage the country’s affairs,” conservative former lawmaker Seyed Reza Akrami told Khabar Online.
He argued that China’s invitation to the Iranian president was “extremely important” given that Iran has not agreed to the restoration of the 2015 nuclear deal, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) or acceded to the conventions of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) which Raisi and other hardliners have strongly opposed.
Iran has been on the FATF blacklist, along with North Korea, since February 2018 for failing to pass legislation introducing transparency measures designed to combat money-laundering, corruption, and financing of ‘terrorism.’
Many analysts, politicians and former government officials in Iran say that failure to join the FATF is detrimental to economic relations with the world, including Russia and China, as foreign banks would still be wary over transactions with Iran.
According to the head of Iran’s Trade Promotion Organization (TPO) Alireza Peyman-Pak, during Raisi’s China visit the two countries signed “19 documents, contracts, and agreements in the fields of industry, mining, and trade, apart from another 20 major documents” to the tune of 3.5 billion dollars.
However, in a series of tweets on Friday, Hamid Aboutalebi, the political deputy of former President Hassan Rouhani’s office argued that Raisi’s] visit to Beijing would not result in a such a ‘strategic balance’.
In the joint statement of the two presidents, Aboutalebi pointed out, there is no mention of the 25-year Comprehensive Cooperation Agreement signed in 2021. There is also no word about Chinese nuclear cooperation with Iran, the modernization of the Arak heavy water reactor which in 2016 during Jinping’s visit to Tehran, they agreed to advance. Banking and financial cooperation was also not mentioned.
Aboutalebi claimed that China has only agreed to mention the lifting of US sanctions in the joint statement only within the context of reviving the 2015 nuclear deal.
Warning not to pin too much hope on China, he wrote, “So, let’s be aware that [Raisi’s] visit to Beijing will not result in a ‘strategic balance in Iran's foreign relation’.”
He also claimed that negotiations for a prisoner exchange are in limbo because “the American government did not act according to its promises.”
Kanaani visited the offices of the hardliner Mehr news website Saturday and spoke with the editorial staff about issues related to nuclear talks and American’s held in Iran.
“The West led by America has adopted a policy of attrition in negotiations, whereby they use every means of pressure, including instigating protests and [continuing] sanctions,” Kanaani said.
He insisted that Washington is indirectly communicating with Tehran, but parallel to talks it uses every means of pressure possible to bring Iran’s tolerance to the breaking point. Among these pressures, Kanaani also mentioned the Iranian opposition that he claimed has “no stature among the Iranian people.”
Tehran’s regime has been badly rattled by more than five months of popular anti-regime protests, with prominent activists in the diaspora uniting and calling for regime change in Iran. These activists have announced that their goal is putting pressure on Western government to support the protests, including listing the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization in Europe.
NBC News reported February 15 that indirect negotiations were taking place for a possible prisoner exchange between the United States and the Islamic Republic. The report said that the two sides were exploring ways that could include a prisoner exchange and the release of $7 billion of frozen Iranian funds by South Korea. Apparently the talks were taking place as recently as this week, when US special envoy for Iran Robert Malley met with Omanis, a regular intermediary between Washington and Tehran.
NBC also reported that the release of the funds would be on the condition that the money will used for purchasing food, reminiscent of ‘food-for-oil’ arrangement during Saddam Hussein’s rule in Iraq in the 1990s.
Iran’s hardliner and anti-Western ruler Ali Khamenei would hardly accept such a condition, which would be humiliating for him and the regime that has already lost a lot of credibility in the eyes of a highly dissatisfied population.
Kanaani who said Iranian citizens arrested in the West for violating US sanctions should be freed, which would be at the heart of a “prisoner exchange” deal.
In fact foreigners held in Tehran are hostages who have been arrested on trumped-up charges and convicted in sham trials.
Kanaani also seemed to demand the release of a former Iranian diplomat convicted on terrorism charges and imprisoned in Belgium. Assadollah Asadi, an Iranian diplomat in Austria was arrested for plotting a 2018 bombing of an opposition rally in Paris and later convicted to a 25-year jail term.
The Biden Administration assumed office pledging to return to the 2015 nuclear deal (JCPOA) with Iran that former President Donald Trump has abandoned in 2018 and imposed sanctions on the Islamic Republic. After 18 months of talks with Iran, the diplomatic process came to a dead-end last September, with the US saying that it is no longer focused on reviving the accord.
In the meantime, anti-regime protests and a sharp deterioration in Iran’s economic situation has put the clerical regime under tremendous pressure. A prisoner deal could perhaps ease tensions and lead to more talks, Tehran hopes.