{"id":465194,"date":"2020-04-29T08:18:54","date_gmt":"2020-04-29T08:18:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mecouncil.org\/?p=465194"},"modified":"2022-09-20T16:07:36","modified_gmt":"2022-09-20T16:07:36","slug":"irans-corona-diplomacy-the-rouhani-administrations-miscalculated-efforts-to-get-sanctions-lifted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/irans-corona-diplomacy-the-rouhani-administrations-miscalculated-efforts-to-get-sanctions-lifted\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran\u2019s corona-diplomacy The Rouhani administration\u2019s miscalculated efforts to get sanctions lifted"},"content":{"rendered":"

While President Trump\u2019s campaign of \u201cmaximum pressure\u201d against Iran has been building for three years now, the COVID-19 pandemic is making its impact much more acute. The administration of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has been pressing<\/a> the U.S. to ease or lift sanctions in light of the public health and economic crises affecting a huge number of Iranians. Iranian politicians say that they cannot import medical goods under sanctions; the U.S responds that such goods have been excluded from the sanctions list. Both sides owe solid evidence to prove their respective arguments.<\/p>\n

Regardless of the exact details, Tehran has tried to use the present coronavirus crisis to improve its international position. Efforts by the Rouhani administration have focused on breaking the \u201cmaximum pressure\u201d campaign, while hardliners continue to reject talks with Washington, hoping that the post-coronavirus era will see a new world order to the benefit of those challenging U.S. power.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cCORONA-DIPLOMACY\u201d BY ROUHANI AND ZARIF<\/strong><\/h2>\n

After Trump\u2019s decision to withdraw the U.S. from the nuclear deal (officially the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA) in May 2018, Rouhani has come under pressure from his domestic opponents. His approval rating is in decline, according to some of his opponents falling to below 10%.<\/a>Against this backdrop, he has tried to revive his key campaign promise of ending onerous sanctions.<\/p>\n

Toward this end, Rouhani has used a variety of tools to pressure Trump \u2014 in many cases via the Europeans \u2014 to ease sanctions. More recently, he sent a letter to the leaders of several countries<\/a>, arguing that lifting sanctions is necessary for the Islamic Republic to effectively fight the coronavirus, while admitting that \u201csanctions have caused about $200 billion of direct damages to the Iranian economy in less than two years.\u201d In the same vein, Foreign Minister Javad Zarif has stepped up his own efforts, fielding the term \u201cmedical terrorism\u201d \u2014 instead of merely \u201ceconomic terrorism\u201d \u2014 as a label for U.S. sanctions. He has also made<\/a> phone calls and sent letters to his counterparts around the world, with his ministry engaged in a Twitter storm to increase pressure on the Trump administration. Zarif called on other countries to outright ignore U.S. sanctions, arguing that sanctions compliance is not moral during a pandemic<\/a>. Russia and China joined Iran\u2019s demand to lift sanctions.<\/p>\n

Alongside efforts to get sanctions eased, speculation abounds that Rouhani and Zarif may be seeking to revive the nuclear deal. Abbas Abdi, a reformist political activist and journalist, says<\/a>: \u201cRouhani wants to use the coronavirus for resolving the issue surrounding the JCPOA, lifting sanctions, and ultimately for talks with the United States. And because of this, he does not insist on quarantine.\u201d Unlike other heavily affected countries, the Iranian president has opposed quarantine measures (imposing social distancing rules for only a short period), while Iranian physicians have insisted that such steps are necessary to contain the disease. When in mid-March the virus was rapidly spreading throughout the country, Rouhani said<\/a> that \u201cthere is not any quarantine now and neither during the new year holidays,\u201d which started on March 20 for two weeks. A member of the Chamber of Commerce said that the administration uses sanctions<\/a> as an excuse to deflect responsibility, pointing out: \u201cWhile other countries devote 10% of their GDP [to] fighting the coronavirus, Iran does not.\u201d<\/p>\n

REACTIONS IN WASHINGTON<\/strong><\/h2>\n

In spite of high international pressure on Washington to ease sanctions \u2014 including from the United Kingdom<\/a>\u00a0and human rights organizations \u2014 the White House doesn\u2019t seem likely to change course. A State Department spokesperson said<\/a> the department had \u201cno issues with humanitarian trade so long as it is conducted with strong due diligence measures,\u201d with Secretary Mike Pompeo saying<\/a> that \u201cthe whole world should know that humanitarian assistance into Iran is wide open. It\u2019s not sanctioned.\u201d When asked about Europe\u2019s first-ever use of the INSTEX payment channel \u2014 which was designed to sideline U.S. sanctions \u2014 to supply Iran with medical goods, Trump shrugged and twice replied: \u201c[It] doesn\u2019t bother me<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the Obama administration, Iran resisted sanctions by boosting its nuclear capability (increasing uranium enrichment and the number of centrifuges); ultimately, via the nuclear deal, sanctions were eased. Rouhani has tried to restart this approach vis-\u00e0-vis Trump, by reducing Iran\u2019s nuclear commitments, but it has not produced any U.S. concessions so far.<\/p>\n

When President Trump decided to withdraw from the nuclear deal in May 2018, Rouhani confidently said<\/a> that \u201cour people won\u2019t feel problems in their life tomorrow, next week, and over the next years. Now, I am happy that an annoying creature is out of the deal.\u201d But after the U.S. re-imposed sanctions that cut Iran off from the JCPOA\u2019s economic benefits, Rouhani said<\/a> in September 2019 that he would be open to discussing \u201csmall changes, additions, or amendments\u201d to the deal if Washington lifted sanctions. In retrospect, however, these overtures were part of a miscalculation from the Rouhani administration: Renegotiating the deal could have potentially been on the table before May 2018, but not after.<\/p>\n

Now, amid the pandemic, the Iranian government\u2019s campaign against Washington\u2019s \u201cmaximum pressure\u201d sanctions has yielded important international support, but the Rouhani administration still seems to misread the White House. Instead, Tehran has reverted to stressing its own ability to manage the crisis. On April 13, Zarif tweeted<\/a>: \u201cDespite US sanctions, Iran has made significant progress in fighting the pandemic,\u201d and Interior Minister Mohammad-Reza Rahmani-Fazli emphasized that \u201cthere is no shortage<\/a> in the country in terms of providing the necessary medical facilities and equipment for coronavirus.\u201d<\/p>\n

DREAMING OF A POST-CORONAVIRUS \u201cNEW WORLD ORDER\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Hardliners in Iran have routinely rejected any renegotiation with Washington. Kayhan<\/em>, a major ultraconservative daily, has warned<\/a> that the coronavirus crisis is not a time for talks. It recalled that when the nuclear deal was reached after long negotiations, the U.S. subsequently withdrew from it. Therefore, the paper maintained, negotiating with the U.S. would be the wrong decision. Vatan Emrooz<\/em>, another hardliner daily, wrote<\/a> that Rouhani\u2019s policy has been the root cause of Iran\u2019s economic weakness, lamenting: \u201cThe only response that has been given to society in this regard was to recommend passive patience in the hope of another president of the United States after the next election.\u201d In the meantime, Baqer Ghalibaf, Rouhani\u2019s two-time presidential rival who is poised to be the next powerful parliament speaker, has criticized<\/a> the \u201cinefficient management of the administration\u201d during the COVID-19 crisis, accusing it of \u201cconcealment of reality, unprofessional optimism, and failure to use public and operational capacities across the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

In another key narrative, Tehran presents the coronavirus as an opportunity toward establishing a new world order. According to administration spokesman Ali Rabeie<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Today, the role of the U.S. in the international system is unilateral with economic, political, and military pressure. But in the post-corona era, we may encounter a multilateral world in which the truth is not based on American discourse. We can create a dialogue between Iran and the world for a system of truth production in the new era.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Javan<\/em><\/a>, a daily close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, has similarly written that \u201cin the post-corona era, the shape of the international system has created golden opportunities in favor of the Islamic Republic.\u201d It added: \u201cIf we make utmost use of the opportunities, Iran will become one of the main actors in the post-corona world. If the West wants to avoid the path of collapse and isolation, they must reform their relations with the East (China, Russia, and Iran).\u201d<\/p>\n

While the Rouhani administration\u2019s \u201ccorona-diplomacy\u201d has not translated into an easing of the White House\u2019s \u201cmaximum pressure\u201d campaign, hardliners in Tehran have reiterated their opposition to talks with Washington, contenting themselves with what they see as a post-coronavirus era on the horizon where their own geopolitical preferences \u2014 i.e. a world order with a declining United States \u2014 are being fulfilled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While President Trump\u2019s campaign of \u201cmaximum pressure\u201d against Iran has been building for three years now, the COVID-19 pandemic is making its impact much more acute. The administration of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has been pressing the U.S. to ease or lift sanctions in light of the public health and economic crises affecting a huge… Continue reading Iran\u2019s corona-diplomacy The Rouhani administration\u2019s miscalculated efforts to get sanctions lifted<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":465195,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"publication_archive_type":[297],"class_list":["post-465194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","publication_archive_type-issue-brief","entry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465194"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":465197,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465194\/revisions\/465197"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/465195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465194"},{"taxonomy":"publication_archive_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publication_archive_type?post=465194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}