In the largest protests in Iran in nearly a decade, thousands of mostly working class people have taken to the streets to decry the nation’s weak economy, corruption and a steep rise in food and gas prices. There are reports that the first protests on Dec. 28 had been organized by hardliners opposed to reformist President Hassan Rouhani, but as the demonstrations spread across the country, economic demands transformed into bold challenges to the institutions of the Islamic Republic itself.
Over the last two weeks, at least 21 people have died in clashes with police and more than 3,700 were arrested according to news reports. While Iran’s Revolutionary Guard accused the U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia of fomenting the unrest, President Rouhani acknowledged that many of the protesters grievances were valid and should be addressed. Trump expressed support for the protesters in a tweet calling on the Iranian government to “respect their people’s rights.” On the upcoming Jan. 13 compliance certification deadline, Trump could decide to re-impose sanctions against Iran, which would effectively withdraw the U.S. from the international Iran nuclear agreement.
JOHN FEFFER: These initial protests were really kind of focused against the reformers. But they spread, and they spread not just to the major cities, not just to Tehran, but to the provinces even further out – to places, to cities that folks outside of Iran had never heard of, and to be honest with you – even some places that Iranians in the big cities had never heard of either.
And the protests developed a very different character. They became more broad-based. They started to challenge some of the foundations, even the conservative foundations of Iranian society. The Iranian government, certainly elements of the Iranian government – the more religious, the more conservative elements – have labeled the protesters as being inspired by foreigners. And not necessarily just the United States. I mean there was a lot of talk inside of Iran of Saudi Arabia inspiring these protesters.
But the United States is, you know, a kind of perennial bogeyman for Iranian conservatives, so of course, the United States was identified as being an architect or one of the architects. So, if you have the American president tweeting his support for the protesters, it makes that link all the stronger, thus making it perhaps easier to discredit the protests.
BETWEEN THE LINES: John Pfeffer, what’s the future of the Iran Nuclear Agreement? This Jan. 13, Donald Trump will have the opportunity to reimpose sanctions and derail the international nuclear agreement. I’m wondering what you speculate may happen as well as what you think Iran’s response would be to an international agreement that’s signed by the United State and Iran, but also European nations, Russia and China – which have steadfastly maintained their support for the agreement?
JOHN FEFFER: That’s absolutely correct. And you know, this is an international agreement. So even if the United States were to withdraw from it, the agreement could still hold. It’s been clear that Trump himself is very much opposed to the agreement and his opposition stems not so much from the particulars of the agreement, but from the fact that it was negotiated by the Obama administration and Trump has taken aim at all of the accomplishments of his predecessor, if only to raise his own stature by comparison. A number of his advisers have said, “Look, you may not like this agreement, but this actually is extremely from the perspective of American national security interests because it genuinely does restrain Iran’s nuclear capabilities. And for us to destroy the agreement would basically give Iran the free hand to do whatever it wants to do.
Now, I don’t think that if the U.S. were to withdraw, Iran would turn around and say, OK, forget it. We are going to move full-speed ahead with a nuclear weapons program, one because I think it decided some time ago, before the negotiations for this agreement – that a nuclear weapons program was NOT actually in the interests of Iran.
But two, because Iran was still going to try to strengthen its economic relations with Europe. It has reasonably good relations with Russia and China. But it’s really the European Union that I think Iran sees as critical to its economic future of the purchase of Iranian products, but more importantly, the flow of capital from European governments and European corporations into Iran, as part of joint ventures or other economic arrangements.
So even if Trump were to cancel – come mid-January – U.S. participation in the agreement, I think it still will hold. But I think again, as with the previous decision that Trump – which was to basically push the decision onto Congress – he’s going to look for some other way of dealing with this issue other than giving a firm “yes” or “no.” And I think that means he will try to get some additional conditions the agreement. I don’t think that will go very far, but his thinking is to try to get these other basically two other groups of issues: One having to do with Iran’s missile capabilities and the other having to do with Iran’s actions in the region, particularly with respect to Hezbollah and Syria and in Iraq.
We might try to get those kind of bundled into this agreement, to at least have negotiations on that. But to be honest with you, the Trump administration efforts to do that in other spheres have so far borne little fruit. The most salient would be the NAFTA negotiations with Canada and Mexico.
The idea of renegotiating what was an extraordinarily complex agreement, especially when the Trump administration is short-handed when it comes to negotiators and expertise. It’s kind of a ridiculous project or has a ridiculous prospect, too.
So I think that’s probably what the Trump administration will attempt to do, but I think it will fail to do and then they’ll have to fall back on that binary choice of “yes or no” with the agreement. My sense is that the administration will probably end up trying to say “no” and saying the protests that took place in December again prove that we should not be negotiating with a government that does not have the support of its own people.
Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with John Feffer, director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute For Policy Studies. Here, he assesses the effect of Trump’s support for Iranian street protests and the consequences of a U.S. withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal.
For more information, visit IPS-DC.org, fpif.org and http://johnfeffer.com.
