Iran’s Tactic for Lifting of Sanctions

A senior negotiator of the Iranian nuclear team has stated that, in case an agreement is reached, all sanctions must be lifted. Sanctions include the sanctions adopted by the Security Council, the European Union, the US administration and the US Congress. There is no doubt that based on the Geneva Agreement, sanctions will be lifted during a period of time. But the question is about the Security Council sanctions. This question that is proposed is that, despite the fact that the negotiating team is aware of the structure of the Security Council, why is the lifting of these sanctions being discussed? Will the nuclear crisis be resolved if such a position is taken?

The first point is that Iran’s nuclear dossier is mainly related to political will. Based on their political will, both parties intend to resolve the problem in the primary agreement. But it is hard to analyze the situation because the data is not enough to define the indexes and predict the agreement on that ground. Right now, considerable change has taken place in the political scene of the US. Republicans gained the majority of seats in the US Congress and some of them have expressed their opposition to Iran. The demands of the two sides are sometimes far from each other and one cannot analyze the situation because there is not any sign in this regard. The analysis is not related to legal affairs because they are dependent on the decisions made by the governments, the win-win game, ignoring short-term interests against long-term interests and defining the tactic based on the strategy.

The other point is that the negotiating team is well aware of the procedures of the UN Security Council and knows that proposing this idea will not reach a good result. It could perhaps be said that such a statement is derived from a political tactic and a leverage of pressure in order to create flexibility on some of the US positions. We know that such an issue would need the opinion of not only the permanent members of the Security Council, but also its non-permanent members as well. Therefore, the idea of lifting sanctions imposed against Iran by the Security Council is Iran’s maximum demand. Both sides know that they will never be able to achieve their maximum demands, thus, they will have to define a medium line.

The last point is that it is stated in the last paragraph of the Geneva Agreement that: “With regard to the final step and any of the middle steps, this basic principle would be implemented that “Unless everything is agreed upon, nothing has been agreed upon.” In that case, if Obama signs an agreement which would not be ratified by the Congress, does the Congress have the right to ignore the commitments made with regard to the agreement or not? It must be said that the Congress can veto the decisions made by the President. The US president can also veto the Congress’ decisions based on the procedures defined in the US Constitution. But considering the political and international atmosphere which has been created and the US interests, it seems impossible that the Congress would use its legal right to stand against the lifting of sanctions.