Stanislav Tarasov. US may tacitly recognize Iran as a nuclear power
US President Barack Obama extended sanctions against Iran. The press service of the White House reports it, citing a letter from the head of state sent to Congress. “Certain actions and policies of the Iranian government continue to pose an extraordinary threat to national security, foreign policy, and the US economy,” the document says. “Therefore, the sanctions announced on 15 March 1995 of the year should remain in effect after 15 March 2015 of the year.” At the same time, Obama called on Congress to abandon additional sanctions against Iran, while negotiations are under way to curb its nuclear program: 15 March in Lausanne, a meeting will be held between US Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif outside the format of the six. As for the “six” itself, its “negotiations with Iran“ have reached the stage at which Tehran needs to make a political decision, ”the American president said. “I don’t see how further extension of the terms of these talks could be useful,” said Obama, refusing earlier to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after he addressed congressional condemnation of the US policy towards Iran.
However, in such a situation, it was logical to follow the path of easing the sanctions, which would stimulate the preparation of a mutually acceptable agreement on the Iranian nuclear program on the eve of June 30 of 2015 - the deadline for completing the negotiations. According to the host of the White House, expressed by the CBS television channel, “the agreement should give Western governments the right to make sure that Iran is not going to create a nuclear weaponand if deceived, the United States and allies should have enough time to react. ” Obama warned: "If we do not achieve such conditions, we will not reach an agreement." It was at this point that the congressmen proposed to adopt a bill, according to which (if the agreement was not signed by the deadline), regular severe sanctions would be introduced against Iran. Anticipating attempts to pass this law before the scheduled date, the president threatens: "If Congress adopts a law on new sanctions, I will veto it as a threat to diplomatic progress." This was the paradoxical situation in which the White House in Congress actually turned out to be on the side of Tehran, which gave rise to the senator from New Jersey and influential member of the foreign affairs committee Robert Menendez to accuse Obama of treason. “The more I hear the statements of the president and his administration about Iran, the more they look like voicing theses coming from Tehran,” Menendez quipped. Perhaps, in order to avoid further unwinding of this political plot, Obama decided, for tactical reasons, to make a preemptive move, extending the sanctions.
In this regard, many US experts urge to be more attentive to the "Iranian hole" in the policy of the White House in the Middle East, in order to reveal the contours of the political-diplomatic combination it is carrying out regarding Tehran. According to the Washington Post, you need to understand why the president, building a diplomatic course towards Iran, unexpectedly qualifies negotiations with him as “promising,” and runs the risk of provoking the so-called Lockerbie effect, when the attitude of the political establishment to him began to change with cautious distrust of outright hostility “, while he makes no effort to submit to the relevant congressional committees a more or less detailed report on the state of negotiations with Tehran outside the format "Six".
Why does the White House waste its political capital on secret correspondence with the Iranian leadership? The Wall Street Journal previously reported that Iran’s spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei responded to an Obama letter sent last November, in which a decision on a nuclear program was linked to Tehran’s participation in the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant coalition (ISIL), based on "common interests". The Iranian Foreign Ministry described Khamenei’s response to the letter as “respectful”, but evasive. We can not ignore the political scandal that erupted in Washington after a group of Republican senators 47 sent a letter to the Iranian leadership, which expressed doubts that agreements on the atomic problem of Tehran with the current US administration would continue after the election of a new president. Obama called such actions "an unusual coalition" of members of Congress and supporters of the "hard line" in Iran. Ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vice President Joseph Biden spoke out on the actions of the Republicans and Kerry described the case as “unprecedented in all stories American diplomacy. "
All this suggests that the formula “nuclear program - participation in the fight against ISIS” contains an important intermediate link, which the parties prefer while they are silent about. We turn first to the atomic problem. The desires of the “six” in this direction are marked: Tehran must give up the desire to acquire nuclear weapons, while retaining the opportunity to conduct research on the peaceful atom. But there is also a position expressed by the former head of Nativ Israel’s special services, Yakov Kedmi, who believes that Iran does not pose a military threat to Israel. According to him, a hypothetical military operation against Tehran will not bring significant results and can delay the appearance of the Iranian bomb for a maximum of one and a half to two years. Kedmi stresses that “the United States does not want to see Iran as a nuclear state, but at one time they didn’t want it with respect to India and Pakistan, too, so it seems that the Americans have accepted that Iran will continue its nuclear program. It is on this field that the US-Israel partnership card and the US desire to improve relations with Tehran are being played. That is, Washington can secretly go for the recognition of Iran’s nuclear power status, but with its mandatory participation in the fight against jihadists, which will make it possible to win the designated “one and a half to two years”.
Now back to ISIS. The Iranian agency FARS believes that the “Islamic State”, formed on the basis of the ideology of Takfirism, is a serious challenge to Tehran’s policy and complicates the security situation. First of all, we are talking about the actions of the militants in the western regions of the country inhabited mainly by Sunnis, who are not satisfied with the Shiite power of the Islamic Republic. The anti-government Islamist group PJAK also operates there. At the same time, no one should be embarrassed by the fact that most Iranian Sunnis belong to the Shafiite trend, which has nothing to do with Hanbalism (another legal school of Sunni Islam) and is located closer to the Shiites. Iran’s participation in the coalition could be a pretext for shifting the front of the struggle of jihadists to the Iranian direction together with the activization of ultra-Islamic associations in neighboring Afghanistan. This particular. But in general, the geographical and geopolitical horizons of the Sunni-Shiite confrontation are capable of spreading throughout the Middle East with the release of ISIS in the South Caucasus.
With the emergence and strengthening of the “Islamic state”, Obama strongly delays the sending of American soldiers to the conflict zone, but demands that the Turkish Armed Forces take part in the ground operation, and “thinly” lead ”Iran to this option. Iraq and Syria are already split after many years of civil and ethnoreligious war unleashed by Washington and their allies under the slogan of "democratization" (the so-called "Arab Spring"). Ankara is seduced by the prospects of strengthening its geopolitical positions in the region, Iran by the status of a nuclear power, ISIS with unpunished opportunity to establish itself within certain boundaries and continue the “historical jihad”, and the Kurds with the prospects for the emergence of an independent state. As the Pentagon’s press secretary, John Kirby, stated, “time is of particular importance now,” “selection of partners with serious motivation to participate in hostilities” and “an element of strategic patience that must be taken into account.” Another thing is that many in Washington consider Obama’s chosen strategy of actions in the Middle East as idealistic and urge the White House to pursue a more realistic policy in this region. But if the president really succeeds in reaching an alliance with Tehran, this, according to the Wall Street Journal, will be "his only diplomatic victory in the region", along with "his only military victory in Libya."
The United States in Afghanistan spent 13 years in unsuccessful attempts to transform this country and defeat the Taliban. The invasion of Iraq for the destruction of non-existent weapons of mass destruction destroyed Iraqi society, untied the hands of radical elements, which later laid the foundations of the Islamic State. The bombing of Libya extended the civil war that killed thousands of people, led to the proliferation of weapons throughout the region, provoked a protracted power struggle in an artificially formed state. Every new political or military move by Americans in the Middle East, as a rule, leads to the emergence of new problems and crises. So we will wait for the end of Washington and the "Iranian party", if it takes place, of course.
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