The Deal As Seen by the Other Side

An interview with an Iranian journalist with connections to the regime, reported in the Wall Street Journal, comports much more closely with the view of the agreement between Iran and the P5+1 that I’ve been suggesting than it does with the view of the deal being portrayed by the White House and in most of the Western press:

Mr. Fazlinejad’s reading of the Geneva agreement mixes triumphalism and hard-nosed skepticism. “We need to be able to have an accurate view of what occurred and then assess it against the positions of the supreme leader and his guidance,” he says. “But as a general matter, if the right to enrich is accepted, which it has been, then everything that we have wanted has been realized.”

Last year, Mr. Shariatmadari, the editor of the newspaper, wrote that Iran has a right to enrich uranium up to 99%. The Obama administration insists that the Geneva agreement doesn’t enshrine a right to enrich uranium. Yet the deal permits the Iranian regime to continue enriching uranium up to 5%—a level that can be quickly escalated to produce weapons-grade material. Mr. Fazlinejad views the Geneva 5% concession as great-power acquiescence to Tehran’s enrichment program. “Now, the details—including the amount of enrichment and the specific enrichment locations and the technological shape of our enrichment program—are up to our technicians to determine,” he says.

Given that the Geneva deal is an interim, six-month arrangement, with a final agreement still to come, Mr. Fazlinejad suggests that Western leaders must “take into account that the supreme leader’s support for the negotiations and agreement has been conditional and by no means absolute. The leader instructed us that if the rights of the Iranian nation and the principles of the revolution are respected and the negotiating team stands up to the overbearing demands of the United States and the global arrogance”—the regime’s terms for the West generally—”then he would support their work.” On the other hand, if the agreement denies Iran’s absolute right to enrich, “then it is from our view essentially void.”

The Kayhan writer warns against perceiving any diplomatic agreement over Iran’s nuclear program as a first step toward broader rapprochement between Washington and Tehran. “The nature of the opposition of the Islamic revolution with the regime of liberal democracy is fundamentally philosophical,” Mr. Fazlinejad says. “It’s an ideological difference. It is not a tactical enmity, or one that has to do with temporary interests, which can be shifted and the enmity thus done away with. . . . So in contrast to all the punditry of late in the international media, which says that these negotiations are a step toward peace between Iran and the United States—those who take this view are completely mistaken.”

I think it’s pretty clear that somebody is kidding somebody. I just don’t know who’s kidding whom.

1 comment… add one
  • CStanley Link

    What’s the old saying, if you don’t know who the mark is, it’s you? I don’t know if that’s the case or not but it seems apt.

    I’m curious about your thoughts on how the Syrian situation is affected by the deal. Doesn’t this strengthen Iran’s hand considerably?

Leave a Comment