Policy Alert #7 | February 20, 2011
Talks over Iran’s nuclear program took place in Istanbul last weekend. In today’s Policy Alert, Iran expert Farideh Farhi assesses the domestic viewpoints in Iran on this issue.
Tehran’s hardliners have effectively outlined a new stance that rejects the West’s two track approach of engagement and pressure. Key features of this position include:
- The P5+1 (five members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) structure of the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program is obsolete.
- Iran is no longer interested in talks in which it stands accused of violations of international norms and rules.
- Prerequisites for further talks will need to include suspension of sanctions and acceptance of Iran’s treaty rights to enrichment.
- Time is on Tehran’s side. Washington needs Iran’s cooperation on a range of issues affecting regional stability, and this will eventually lead to a change in its overall policy toward Iran.
- Iran’s most prominent hard-line daily, Kayhan, criticizes the negotiation process during the reformist era as one that “resulted in significant harm to the country” and “turned into a concessionary path for the Iranian side.” If Iran is to re-enter an extensive negotiating process, “there has to be clarity about the purpose of these talks.” As Kayhan states in its editorial, “It is not as though Iran will sit in front of a table while still under pressure and while every day there is subversion against it.”
However, reformists and centrists still think that less bombastic rhetoric and more adept diplomacy can lead to results in the P5+1 format. They are skeptical that a hard-line stance will actually change the US position and sanctions. Nevertheless, their criticism comes in a much more muted fashion in today’s political environment in Iran.
Farideh Farhi is a expert on Iran, based at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. The full text of her commentary can be read here.
