Tag: Fatwa

Articles, Publications

Will Iran’s nuclear diplomacy lead to regional solutions?

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Ayatollah Khamenei first permitted direct negotiations between Iran and the United States on the nuclear issue after US President Barack Obama came into office, during the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Direct talks were held first in Vienna in 2009 and continued in Muscat in 2012. With the election of Rouhani in June 2013, a more professional nuclear negotiating team was appointed and a more favorable international political climate for serious negotiations was created. To accommodate a nuclear deal, Ayatollah Khamenei gave permission again for direct talks between Iran and United States, allowing for the bilateral negotiations that proved to be the critical prerequisite to the nuclear deal to eventually be reached.

Indeed, it is of crucial importance to note that the Rouhani administration would not have been able to reach and uphold the nuclear deal without the support of Ayatollah Khamenei. Hard-line domestic opponents of Rouhani would have certainly killed the deal if not for the supreme leader’s explicit support for the administration and nuclear negotiators. When the parliament was debating the nuclear deal these past several months, I was in Iran and witnessed firsthand the bellicose nature of the opposition. The rhetoric reached such a level of hostility that at one point a hard-line parliament member menaced Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, threatening to put him and Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization head Ali Akbar Salehi in the “heart” of Iran’s plutonium reactor and “bury” them “in cement.”

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“Will Iran’s nuclear diplomacy lead to regional solutions?” Hossein Mousavian, Al Monitor, November 3, 2015.

Interviews

Will Nuclear Deal Boost Iran Moderates or Hard-Liners?

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“Will Nuclear Deal Boost Iran Moderates or Hard-Liners?” Interview with Hossein Mousavian, WSJ, May 28, 2015.

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Quote:

“The nuclear issue would be the first step for testing whether the engagement policy is successful. If the U.S. continues the policy of engagement rather than confrontation, you would find Iran much more flexible and much more ready to cooperate on regional issues,” said Seyed Hossein Mousavian, who headed the foreign relations committee at Iran’s National Security Council until 2005 and is now a visiting scholar at Princeton University.

“But if the West and the regional powers push for more coercion policies against Iran, this would strengthen radicalism in Iran. The equation is clear.”

Articles, Publications

Would Iran deal set new nuclear proliferation standard?

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Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, arrived in Geneva Feb. 21 to hold bilateral meetings with US Secretary of State John Kerry and US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz. Hossein Fereydoun, President Hassan Rouhani’s senior adviser, is also accompanying the Iranian negotiation team to facilitate consultations and coordination. This is the highest level of talks between Iran and the United States since the 1979 revolution. The nuclear talks between Iran and the world powers are at a most critical moment — and in their final phase — and the chance for a final deal is likely more than 50%.

Recently, Henry Kissinger, the former US secretary of state and national security adviser whose knowledge of national security matters is often viewed as paramount in certain Washington circles, has attempted to cast unwarranted criticism on efforts to negotiate a peaceful resolution to the Iranian nuclear dispute. “The impact of this approach will be to move from preventing proliferation to managing it,” Kissinger said of the ongoing diplomatic efforts. “And if the other countries in the region conclude that America has approved the development of an enrichment capability within one year of a nuclear weapon, and if they then insist on building the same capability, we will live in a proliferated world in which everybody — even if that agreement is maintained — will be very close to the trigger point.”

Kissinger’s assessment reflects a beleaguered understanding of the current status of the nuclear negotiations and the history of Iran’s nuclear program, as well as the realities of the current international system in regard to nuclear proliferation.

The key to understanding the nuclear proliferation issue is to have a firm grasp of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) that has as its goal reducing the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology, as well as nuclear weapons disarmament on behalf of the nuclear weapons powers.

Over the years, many nations signatory to the treaty, on both sides of the nuclear weapons divide, have been in technical violation of their obligations under the NPT. There have been at least five states — Brazil, Argentina, Egypt, South Korea and Taiwan — that have engaged in clandestine nuclear programs without notifying the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The nuclear weapons states, too, have oftentimes been negligent in their obligation to dismantle their nuclear weapons and in many cases have actually upgraded their warheads and increased their number. In the case of Iran, there has also arguably been a significant double standard.

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“Would Iran deal set new nuclear proliferation standard?” Hossein Mousavian, Al Monitor, February 22, 2015.

Interviews

Iran and the United States: An Insider’s View

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Seyed Hossein Mousavian, the lead author of Iran and the United States: An Insider’s View on the Failed Past and the Road to Peace, has two objectives: to help American readers understand the Iranian perspective on the fraught US-Iranian relationship, and to advocate a sustained attempt to break the cycle of hostility that was triggered by the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Such is the suspicion on both sides of this relationship that some readers may wonder about the extent to which Mousavian’s descriptions of the Iranian perspective in this book, which was co-authored by Shahir Shahidsaless, can be trusted. This reviewer’s opinion is that Mousavian—a former Iranian ambassador who has been living in the US since 2009—whom the reviewer has known since 2004, is not trying to pull wool over anyone’s eyes. There is corroborating evidence for much of the information he advances. If in places the reader senses that he or she is not getting the full story, a respectable explanation is to hand: those who have worked at the heart of a government, as Mousavian has done, are bound to be “economical” with certain truths, as a British cabinet secretary once put it.

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“Iran and the United States: An Insider’s View,” Peter Jenkins, BBC Farsi, October 13, 2014.

Essays, Publications

Iranian Perceptions of U.S. Policy toward Iran: Ayatollah Khamenei’s Mind-Set

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An understanding of the critical role and mind-set of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, is essential for anyone wishing to assess the prospects of a rapprochement between Tehran and Washington. It is important to note that the aims and policy choices espoused by the Supreme Leader have to be understood within the context of the immediate political circumstances at the time of his appointment as Supreme Leader and the evolution of global geopolitics since the end of the Cold War. Under the rule of the Shah of Iran, throughout most of the Cold War period, Iran’s role had been that of a client state under Western (U. S. ) hegemony. In fact, this had been Iran’s position in the world order for most of the last two centuries. This subservience was caused by its dependence on the rising Imperial powers of Great Britain and Russia and later the United States.

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“Iranian Perceptions of U.S. Policy toward Iran: Ayatollah Khamenei’s Mind-Set,” Hossein Mousavian in A. Maleki & J. Tirman (Eds.). U.S.-Iran Misperceptions: A Dialogue (pp. 37–56). Published by Bloomsbury Academic (10/2014).

Essays, Publications

After The Iran Nuclear Deal

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Overcoming a decade of failed nuclear negotiations, Iran and the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany) signed an interim nuclear deal, the Joint Plan of Action (JPA), in Geneva on November 24, 2013. The agreement put into motion talks to reach a mutually agreed long-term comprehensive solution that would ensure Iran’s nuclear program would be exclusively peaceful. In a broader sense, the outcome of the nuclear negotiations with Iran will have a profound impact on nuclear non-proliferation. It could be a significant step toward a Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone and a Weapons of Mass Destruction-Free Zone in the Middle East.

According to the interim agreement, Tehran “reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek or develop any nuclear weapons.” The comprehensive solution will build on interim steps and aims to resolve the decades-long nuclear dispute between Iran and world powers. It also paves the way for Iran “to fully enjoy its right to nuclear energy for peaceful purposes under the relevant articles of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in conformity with its obligations therein.” To ensure the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program, the comprehensive agreement seeks to define a mutually agreed enrichment program with stringent transparency and verification mechanisms in place. The implementation of the agreement will be based on a mutually reciprocal, step-by-step process, to result ultimately in the comprehensive lifting of all unilateral, multilateral and UN Security Council sanctions related to Iran’s nuclear program.

If diplomacy fails and the interim deal reached in November 2013 does not produce a permanent solution, it will ultimately lead to heightened tensions, a possible all-out war, and force Iran to withdraw from the NPT. Now that against all odds, the United States and European Union have made a deal with Iran, skeptics and opponents have started mobilizing again—in both Tehran as well as in many other capitals, including Washington. In Iran, internal opposition to the deal is driven by concerns related to the hostile policies followed during Obama’s first term and by Israel’s continued challenge of Iran’s right to enrich its nuclear stockpile for energy use. In the United States, internal opposition to the deal and concern about Iranian behavior have been reinforced by two of its closest allies, Israel and Saudi Arabia. The deep uneasiness in those countries is tangible and immediate, for both see Iran as a mortal enemy, bent on Israel’s destruction and regional hegemony.

Finalizing a deal will require compromise by all parties. One of the key challenges will be the likely American insistence that Tehran make concessions far beyond the NPT requirements. Such demands to curb Iran’s nuclear program include dismantling a significant portion of existing centrifuges and low-enriched uranium stockpiles; closure of Fordo, Iran’s second enrichment site near the city of Qom; dismantling of the Arak heavy water research reactor; and intrusive inspections and monitoring that go beyond the NPT and the Additional Protocol. As an NPT member state, Iran would not accept targeted discrimination.

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“After The Iran Nuclear Deal,” Cairo Review, Hossein Mousavian. Published by the Cairo Review of Global Affairs, July 6 2014.