Translated from GegenStandpunkt 1-2020
Trump’s America vs. Iran
Notes on a new type of asymmetric war
1.
Already during his first election campaign, now an eternity ago in world politics, Donald Trump was announcing to the world that he would radically revise US policy toward Iran. As president, he followed up this announcement with the appropriate actions. These are informative, beyond this specific case, about the nature of conflicts involving states which Trump identifies as enemies.
Following his termination of the JCPOA nuclear agreement[1], which he had vehemently criticized, Trump announced a policy of “maximum pressure”: sanctions that, as Trump himself proudly proclaimed, would be of unprecedented scope and of hitherto unsurpassed severity. When he announced in mid-2019 that Iran’s economy had been “absolutely broken” as a result of them, this may well have been another case of his characteristically exaggerated bravado. However, it’s very eloquent in regards to the purpose of the sanctions. It reveals at least this much: it’s about nothing less than breaking the material substance of Iran’s sovereignty, insofar as it exists. What Trump’s America is doing and demonstrating vis-à-vis Iran is that America’s power of economic blackmail is sufficiently vast to act as a substitute for war, that is, to destroy Iran’s anti-Americanism by excluding it from the US-dominated world economy.
2.
Trump did not need to decree his nation’s hostile stance toward Iran; on the contrary, he himself understands and praises his policy as the finally consistent practice of the enmity, and it has a tradition in the USA – one which includes an enemy image in all its corresponding scholarly and popular versions – that now goes back forty years; that is, as long as Iran, in the form of the Islamic Republic, has been practically and avowedly presenting itself as anti-American.
That’s what the leaders and followers of the Islamic Revolution of 1979 intended; Iran, with its sizable territory, strong headed people, and lots and lots of oil and gas, was to be liberated from its status as a vassal that the USA had assigned to the economic role of oil supplier for an American-dominated global capitalism, and strategically limited to serving as an anti-communist outpost. The Shiite revolutionaries waged, and continue to wage, this liberation struggle with the ethos of following a higher religious calling, and thereby of being at one with the Islamic nature of their people; for them, their struggle for economic and political independence is synonymous with the Islamic moralization of the people and nation. For this end, and according to this principle, they use their billions from oil exports to organize their economy – which puts the nation’s money-making, and especially its international ‘integration’, under the reservations and requirements of national usefulness, social compatibility and conformity with Islamic legal norms – and their state structure, which is supposed to mediate the higher principles of Islam with the practical necessities of a modern state power, through an intricately organized division of authorities and powers.
To America’s great annoyance, however, it is not simply that the revolutionary mullahs broke Iran out of the cordon of American outposts, and even that they are making use of the world market in general and its oil and gas sector in particular for this purpose. Rather, they have combined this with an outwardly oriented strategic sense of mission. They held, and still do, that their country is so great, its mission so justified, that from the beginning they have aggressively carried out its self-assertion as an anti-American bulwark, as a program for the rise of an Islamic regional power. To this end, they have tried to ensure that the neighboring states and peoples, who also essentially pray toward Mecca, follow the higher commandment of resistance against American-Western foreign domination and its immoralization of the masses and national rulers. This drive to export revolution finds points of reference and attack in the American military presence in the region – which has been massive not just since the Iraq wars –, then in the existence and extensive ‘power projection’ of America’s ally Israel, and finally in the pro-American ruling houses on the Arabian Peninsula who Iran for over four decades has accused of being lackeys of Western imperialism and Zionism and of oppressing their people and their Islamic desire for liberation and independence.
For its religiously inspired regional power ambitions, Iran has owed itself its own nuclear program – also since its first years as an Islamic republic. Officially, this was, and still is, civilian-oriented, in keeping with the religious leader’s still valid fatwa. However, having all the components of a modern nuclear-industrial complex at its disposal – i.e. the nuclear autonomy that Iran is aiming for with this program – objectively includes the potential for its own military-nuclear deterren power, and this is the goal of Iranian nuclear strategists. This at once completes the US definition of Iran as an out-and-out enemy state whose behavior can’t be tolerated by the world power.
3.
In this respect, Trump, as mentioned, stands entirely in the four-decade-old tradition of American anti-Iranianism, which he puts a lot of value on – and, in his own special way, also specifically points out when he says that he thinks the appropriate number of possible targets of a major military strike on Iran might be the number of American hostages who were held during the occupation of the US embassy, which is considered to be, after Vietnam, the second greatest post-war trauma of the American imperialist psyche.
Over time, the perspectives from which, and the ways in which, the respective American leaderships have dealt with this malfunction, which was declared impossible and therefore to be eliminated at all costs, have changed repeatedly, always as part of the USA’s global political strategy. The various ‘strategic approaches’ were identical in that they always conducted the confrontation with Iran as a case for, and contribution to, an overarching American world order: whether within the framework of Clinton’s “dual containment” or Bush Jr.’s “war on terror,” American-orchestrated and dominated fronts against Iran, in which other nations should be and were allowed to join, were not only a means but a principle of the USA’s fight against the Iranian malfunction. It was therefore constructed as a case for a supranational supervisory regime whose necessity was ensured by the superior power of the USA and authenticated and completed by the participation of the other powers. Obama took this principle of developing American world power as a supranational basis for supervision to its climax, known as the JCPOA: Underpinned by a gigantic US military deployment and a qualitatively and quantitatively unprecedented rearming of America’s allies in the region, the US threatened Iran with a devastating major war – as the starting point for a diplomacy in which the USA took the liberty of separating the Iranian nuclear program, subject to all sorts of reservations, from the rest of the Iranian state’s annoying raison d'êtat, and of staging and resolving it as the main case for the major global political project of a finally effective American control regime over the global nuclear weapons budget. To this end, the other recognized nuclear permanent Security Council powers, plus Germany, were involved in persuading Iran to renounce any nuclear autonomy; in return, it was granted recognition as a full member of the world community and a participant in the global market.
All of this is now being thoroughly revised. The aim of America’s new Iran policy is the unconditional surrender of the enemy without any ifs and/or buts; so unconditionally that it doesn’t matter to the dealmaker Trump which and what kind of government ultimately signs the surrender – experimenting with democratic regime change is not on the agenda.[2] For the President, war is not suitable as a means to this end: he has learned from his predecessors’ endlessly protracted military interventions, which involved great financial expense and human, even American, sacrifice, that America is giving away its unique superiority when it engages in a military slugfest that it is certain to win in the end, but until then stays at the level of the enemy it is fighting. This is not only unworthy of a world power and wrong – in any case, it’s anything but a viable deal – but, above all, completely unnecessary. Because with its incomparable weight on the world market and its dominance over the means of payment and payment transactions of global capitalism, America has everything it needs to take away the country’s economic basis of existence in a completely civil manner and at virtually zero cost: means of destruction that Iran can’t equal from the outset and can’t even come close to being able to counter with anything similar. The possibility of the country involving the USA in a costly military conflict is not ruled out just for reasons to do with the map: the Trump administration opposes any possible steps of this kind with the absolutely deterrent surefire prospect of immediate destruction of the country. America’s strategy of choice, to drive Tehran into unconditional self-destruction, is therefore a civilian one: Increasingly harsher and more comprehensive economic sanctions will gradually and, if necessary, eventually completely destroy the nation’s material means of survival – without the effort it would cost to “bomb Iran back to the Stone Age,” like it did Vietnam.
From the point of view of America’s irresistible power of extortion, there is no need for any agreement with the other powers; on the contrary, the use of the “secondary” weapon against Iran, namely the ban on all other states trading with Iran – the USA does not have any significant economic relations with Iran anyway – is an opportunity for Trump to repeatedly and explicitly point out that the problem he sees with Iran and is trying to finally solve is at least half in part a problem that America has with the other powers. His leadership will finally stop a declared enemy of America from receiving American dollars which are used to stubbornly refuse its long overdue surrender. So Trump is asserting to all third parties as well that they are completely, unilaterally dependent on America’s unilaterally terminable participation in the world’s dollar economy, meaning that they cannot afford to violate America’s ban on the Iranian enemy nation.
* Total asymmetry: This is the position, principle, and method of Trump’s Iran policy.
4.
Against this attack from the standpoint and the arsenal of unilateral American power, Iran is trying to save for itself what the nuclear agreement with its assembly of the most important strategic powers already partly provided in terms of political recognition and economic activity on the world market and partly held out in prospects. In view of America’s termination, Tehran is relying on the agreements reached with the remaining treaty powers and appealing to their material interest in the circulation of commodities, money, and capital in Iran, as well as to their claim, documented in the JCPOA, to be the world power responsible for such international regulatory and legal issues.
With its appeals to the economic interests and global political aspirations of the remaining treaty partners, Iran is walking through an open door and receiving loud assurances from them, one by one and also in chorus, that the unilateral American termination is unacceptable. In practice, however, the Iranian foreign policymakers quickly and clearly fail in their attempt to keep the contractual rights and obligations with the rump collective of the remaining guarantor powers in force and thus in making the sanctions come to nothing: the sanctions are, after all, designed that way, with the intention of blocking this ‘way out’, that is, they extend the ban on economic cooperation with Iran from the outset to the entire world of business-minded players and state protective powers. The only way to ‘evade’ the sanctions, which America per se provides with universal – extraterritorial, as it’s called in expert circles – claims to validity and subjects to penalty, is through a confrontation with America, which the world power threatens against every potential sanctions breaker.
In doing so, America is not confronting the collective to which Iran is appealing, but rather threatening each of these powers with its sanctions weapon – and Iran is feeling the effect this has on all the treaty powers it calls on because each of them is calculating individually what it can and wants to do to counter this threat, what damages it can expect, and what benefits it can possibly hope to gain from continuing economic cooperation with Iran against America’s wishes. There are certainly differences in the calculations and how they are put into practice, but not in the respect that is crucial for Iran: Russia, which is in its own strategic dispute with the USA and itself subject to American sanctions, has comparatively little to lose in economic dealings with America, is willing to engage in limited military and economic cooperation, but does not have much to offer in the latter. China, in its rivalry with the USA on the one hand and its need for Iranian oil on the other, is only to a very limited extent willing to break sanctions for oil and other barter trades – compared to the trade practiced until then, these have shrunk to a fraction. And for the Europeans, on whom Iran has relied the most in terms of its reintegration into the global economy, there is nothing at all to be gained in terms of materially relevant cooperation against America. Overall, Iran is failing pretty much completely in its attempt to persuade these powers to collaborate in a way that will secure the material basis of its sovereignty against the sanctions regime that was designed to destroy it.
5.
This is why Iran has to rely on its own resources to defend itself. The first thing that the Tehran leadership takes into account for its defensive efforts is its regime over its own people and the national economy. It is organizing a defensive and emergency economy that aims to economically withstand the American attack. Trump’s repeatedly proclaimed certainty that its survival is impossible against America’s sanctions and that Iran’s defeat is therefore inevitable is countered by its emergency policy proudly dubbed a “resistance economy” with the demonstration that America’s ambition to destroy it is not directly synonymous with its success. The survival program is carried out with the necessary force and the people are also suitably morally instructed for it, indeed by the Supreme Leader himself, who explains to his compatriots that the principles of the “resistance economy” correspond entirely to the pious, deprivation-loving, but also shrewd and innovative-in-adversity Iranian-Muslim soul of the people. This total national effort is intended to deprive the USA of the patience and desire for its strategy of starving them out. The suffering capacity of the proud Iranian people that is being resolutely organized and claimed from above against the superior sanctions power of the USA, which aims at a quick destructive success, is not to be worn out at any cost – this is supposed to convince them that, despite all the devastation[3], Iran’s self-assertion can’t be overcome in this way, especially not in the form of the economic blitzkrieg propagated by Trump. [4]
6.
In addition to its “resistance economy,” Iran mobilizes its potential to stir up unrest in the surrounding region, which is occupied by America’s allies or claimed by the USA itself in a front against Iran.
To this end, the Iranian resistance strategists are drawing with renewed militancy on the alliances they have forged over the decades with their Islamic ‘exporting revolution’, especially with Shiite movements, state and non-state rulers in the region, and are activating all the departments – financial, military, political, ideological – of their hard-won and cultivated status as the last great state patron of all Islamic anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism. Wherever America and its allies want to push them and their allies out or incapacitate them, the Iranian foreign brigades, with the help of their local brothers in faith and arms, are trying to dig in, hold on, and, if possible, unleash even more violence than before. In this way, America should be taught that its attempt to constrict Iran on its soil and to starve it economically will not bring about its capitulation, but rather the opposite, the expansion of their disruptive activities. Their willingness and ability to cause an unstoppable unrest are intended to demand that the world power, whose leaders have already announced that it will force Iran’s withdrawal from its regional positions[5], pay a strategic price for its hostility, and to provide sufficient incentive for it to return to negotiations after all. And for this perspective, they represent the bargaining chip which can only be bought from Iran through genuine compromises.
Iran’s efforts to reactivate its nuclear program, which has long been the main bone of contention for all US administrations in the Iran case, also have this objective. For Iran, the program of nuclear autonomy is more urgent than ever following the American termination of the JCPOA and the formal and factual guarantee of sovereignty and security contained in it – now in order to get the superior enemy, who is also recognized as superior, to take Iran seriously again as a power which even the mighty America cannot avoid making concessions to. The components of the nuclear program that were frozen or dismantled in accordance with the JCPOA are being reactivated in a demonstrative and planned manner and the construction of a new nuclear power plant and new uranium enrichment facilities is being pushed forward. With all the announced interim successes and all the practical security measures – e.g., the construction of facilities buried deep in the earth and protected by modern Russian S300 defense systems – Iran wants to teach the USA in practice that an end to its nuclear ambitions does not exist as submission to an American ban, nor as the result of a limited and risk-free military strike, but only as the result of negotiations and as a genuine quid pro quo.
Iran’s strategy is not ineffective: with its allies in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, Iran is forcing its opponent Israel, incited by Trump’s policies, to weigh up how many war fronts it wants to open or sustain at the same time in its regionally expansive use of violence; in the event of a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities, which Israel is increasingly and openly bringing into play, it is threatened with war on at three or four fronts. In Syria, Iran, together with Russia, has succeeded in preventing the disempowerment of the last remaining state ally in the region, which the Western powers, Turkey and the oil monarchies which have also now been appointed higher offices, had planned to carry out in a concerted way. Turkey and Russia recognize Iran as the third party that can legitimately negotiate the course of the war with it as part of the Astana peace talks. In Iraq, which has been completely destroyed by two major American wars and interim sanctions, Iran has declared itself the protective power of the Shiite majority and established itself as a party that cannot be ignored in the violent struggle for control over parts of the country, population groups, and oil revenues – and has even managed to achieve a degree of semi-official collaboration with the American-led alliance against ISIS.
And by supporting one of the sides in the war in Yemen, Iran is demonstrating to its Arab opponents on the other coast of the Gulf, especially the Saudis, who see themselves incited by Trump’s policies to act as an anti-Iranian regional power, that they simply cannot win the air war being staged as a demonstration of their superiority to install a puppet government of their choosing in their Yemeni backyard.
7.
It's just that the intended effect isn’t achieved because the addressee isn’t impressed by it. Trump sees Iran’s internal efforts to survive the sanctions through a “resistance economy” as a practical admission of how well they are working,[6] as the beginning of the end of Iran’s will and ability to persevere, for which the violent protests against poverty come in handy at the right time. And the strategy of disruption on multiple fronts, which is aimed at resuming diplomatic relations between the USA and Iran, is also failing because of Trump’s fundamentalism: he does not allow Iran to make any calculations, but rather responds to Iran’s violent resistance by ostentatiously sticking to his line.
On the one hand, Trump is proving that the economic sanctions weapon is not at all ineffective, especially against Iran’s military proxy fights in the region: Iran’s militant allies are not spared from the American sanctions regime, but are themselves becoming its victims – Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Shiite parties in Iraq have long been fighting more to maintain their own positions of power than to be able to exploit them offensively in Iran’s interests, because the loyalty of their supporters and rank and file is dwindling as material support for a few livelihoods, financed primarily from Iranian sources, is collapsing.
On the other hand, Iran is finding the stable genius who heads America a hard nut to crack in that he asks himself, after every single case of Iranian violence in the surrounding area, whether anything essential for America has been disrupted, let alone endangered, and usually denies this. Where Iran with its actions stirring up unrest wants to indirectly bother America itself via its damage to American allies, the world power is regularly and ostentatiously unconcerned, according to the judgment of its president: Trump gives the Israelis complete freedom in their dealings with Hamas; the fact that Iran has moved far too close to the Israeli border in Syria for Israel’s liking is none of his business – he has explicitly rejected the definition of Syria as the main theater of war against Iran, which America would have to dominate with its own presence.[7] It is fine with him that Iran is fighting and bleeding itself dry in Iraq by interfering in the internal Iraqi carnage and especially in pushing back ISIS – wherever Iranian or Iraqi forces allied with Iran cause trouble, they will be fought.
The unfortunate interim conclusion for Iran is that Trump will not allow himself to be forced into choosing either the battlefield or the weapons, let alone into recognizing this inferior power as a global political counterpart with whom anything other than its surrender would be necessary to negotiate.
8.
This line of asserting itself as a disruptive factor on the basis of nationally organized material survival in order to force consideration is pursued by Iran not only toward America, but also toward the Europeans, because – see above – the attempt to grab them by their positive interests into economic cooperation with Iran has failed because of the US sanctions regime.
Iran’s main battleground for this is, once again, its nuclear program. In the certainty that the Europeans its nuclear autonomy definitely does not suit the Europeans, Iran is not only pushing ahead with this program on schedule again, but is also making an offer to the E3 – Great Britain, France and Germany – to renounce it if they finally provide it with effective survival assistance – whether in the form of serious mediation vis-à-vis the USA or in the form of practically relevant alternative measures for participating in the world market that America denies them. To this end, Iran’s nuclear strategists announce every single step of the resumption as their right while at the same time always stating the circumstances under which they could be persuaded to cancel or withdraw it. They accompany all this on a moral level with appeals to the imperialist sense of honor of the friendly European powers – “It’s a disaster for Europe to be so subservient to the U.S. Anybody who accepts unilateralism is helping it.”[8] At the level of real imperialist calculations, the diplomatic bravado – “The Europeans can’t buckle to Trump and then try to act like the strong man against Iran” (ibid.) – is admittedly much more modest: it ultimately consists in an appeal to finally take its willingness to make far-reaching concessions to them so seriously that they finally get serious about their insubordination to the USA. But that is precisely what they are not risking, thus ensuring that Iran, even with its nuclear impudence, will continue to fail because of America’s intransigence.
In the summer of 2019, Iran demonstrated how much immediate violent escalation, going beyond the nuclear program, is good for this contradictory policy of pushing for effective anti-American cooperation while being underpinned by disruptions to European interests: Iran responded to the British Navy’s detention of an Iranian oil tanker in the Mediterranean by capturing a British tanker off its coast in the Persian Gulf. What Iran demonstrated with this action was its potential to severely disrupt this key oil transportation route for world capitalism and its willingness to engage in a clash with a sophisticated naval power like Great Britain to do so. Britain and everyone else should take note that Iran will not allow itself to be excluded from its main economic lifeline, the oil trade, while at the same time passively watching this trade continue uninterrupted on its doorstep, with Iran excluded. No one should be able to afford to ignore Iran’s survival needs and demands for consideration, which is being done by everyone at America’s behest.
It’s true that Iran achieved this much with its action: Great Britain agreed to a tanker-for-tanker swap. But that was not Iran’s aim, or was so only marginally; it was more about forcing the British, the Europeans as a whole, and, in the long term, the Americans as well, to treat it differently. And once again, Iran can’t escape the realization that its limited use of force against the European power Great Britain – as with all other actions aimed in the same direction – ultimately failed due to America’s mixture of intransigence and superior nonchalance: under Trump, America no longer pursues the goal of enforcing freedom of the seas as a Western collective claim. Its leader in no way sees an act of violence in the tanker affair, an escalation of any kind against him, that could compel the world power to respond on the same level or even to meet any of Iran’s demands, even if only for a bit of mutual de-escalation.
9.
With a brief exchange of military blows and the accompanying diplomacy, which the world power and Iran engaged in at the turn of the year, the Trump administration confirmed the principle of asymmetric (non-)war that it has consistently pursued.
At the end of 2019, unrest broke out in Iraq, aimed not least against Iran’s claims to co-determination in the administration and management of Iraq’s military, oil industry, and poverty. This was warmly welcomed – some even wanting to know: also practically encouraged, and promoted – by the USA. The suppression of the protests by pro-Iranian militias further fueled the dispute over who in Iraq is in charge, to what extent, and against whom, while at the same time a few thousand American soldiers were deployed or on standby for a whole range of tasks. They control Iran’s movements towards Syria and Lebanon, are available to fight ISIS in Iraq as well as to occasionally curb the range of movement of the various pro-Iranian militias. They also form a demonstrative, permanent potential threat that can be deployed as needed vis-à-vis the unreliable Iraqi army. Iran responded to this support for the anti-Iranian forces in Iraq with eloquent threats that the nonchalance and security of the US presence in the midst of the Iraqi violence will come to an end if America does not abandon its policy of strangulation and even attempts to deprive Iran of its Iraqi front. Iraqi militias promptly launched a few attacks on the American military forces. The American commander-in-chief defined these attacks as an Iranian act of war and transgression of the ad hoc line he had drawn, which consisted of the integrity that he claims for American troops in the middle of the ongoing Iraqi war, which is otherwise of no interest to him. The US response is militarily and politically impressive, once again worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize:
In the middle of Iraq, which Iran defines as a friendly foreign country, on the grounds of Baghdad International Airport, the US military uses guided missiles to take out the chief military planner and supervisor of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s foreign operations and his most important Iraqi contact. This demonstrates to Iran that its military presence in Iraq depends simply and entirely on the fact that the USA has not yet ended it. By summarily, casually, and without any hint of secrecy liquidating the military leadership and moral symbol of Iran’s military resistance in the region, it practically demonstrates that Iran is not capable of the war it merely stages as a threat and which America therefore neither needs nor wants to wage. And then Trump once again explicitly explains how this remote-controlled message was meant: Trump follows up the practically demonstrated invincibility and unattainable power of American violence by pointing out that under his leadership, with $2.5 trillion, the strongest military force in the world has become “stronger than ever,” making a showdown with a non-adversary like Iran unnecessary:
“The fact that we have this great military and equipment, however, does not mean we have to use it. We do not want to use it. American strength, both military and economic, is the best deterrent.”
His domestic political opponents and perpetually horrified European ‘partners’ may have warned that this personal decapitation attack could provoke an uncontrollable escalation and destroy any potential willingness by Iran to negotiate; the anti-Iranian ‘hawks’ may have hoped that he would finally, finally start the war that Iran has long deserved – Trump sees the action as the settlement of any military escalation. He insists that only America is capable of such escalations and that’s why he is unwilling to do it. Which means, by implication, that this insight represents the only Iranian negotiating position that he considers worth dealing with. In this sense, he is sure that he has taught the Iranians a useful lesson, which is why he suggests to the anti-American zealous mullahs that they should rather help dear America fight ISIS in Iraq, for behold: “IS is Iran’s natural enemy.”
10.
Iran, for its part, remains principled and launches the next round of violent proposals for a common understanding: Iran is responding to the killing of Soleimani with a gigantic display of national willingness to fight and sacrifice. Then, with a limited military strike on an American military base. Whether it actually communicated this to the Americans through its Iraqi connections in order to avoid casualties is irrelevant because the Iranian diplomats provide assurances about the unwaveringly concessionary character of all Iranian threats and uses of force, for example, like this:
“The strike against the military base in Iraq, from which the U.S. conducted its operation, was Iran's formal military response. There was no intention of causing any casualties with the missile attack – we were executing our right to self-defense in an proportionate manner...Soleimani’s murder is the beginning of the end of the U.S. presence – certainly in Iraq, but elsewhere in the region, too. It may not be tomorrow, but we have millennia of history, so we are not in a hurry...We told them that the action has ended and that we will not take any more action if they don’t take any more action...For us, it doesn’t matter who is sitting in the White House. What matters is how they behave. The Trump administration can correct its past, lift the sanctions and come back to the negotiating table. We’re still at the negotiating table. They’re the ones who left. The U.S. has inflicted great harm on the Iranian people. The day will come when they will have to compensate for that. We have a lot of patience.” (Der Spiegel interview with Mohammad Javad Zarif, January 24, 2020)
For all his patience and capacity for suffering, for which he obviously takes his people into custody as as is usual for ordinary politicians, the Iranian Foreign Minister does not, however, persuade the White House’s ruling advocate of sanctions-based pacifism to give in to the Iranian desire to negotiate: Trump unceremoniously denies any serious ambition to the Iranian counter-attack against the Soleimani execution, even congratulates the people of Tehran on their level-headedness, and otherwise puts an end to any error on the part of the Iranian Foreign Minister regarding the only possible relationship between sanctions and diplomacy with a comprehensive and final clarification via Twitter: “Iranian Foreign Minister says Iran wants to negotiate with The United States, but [sic!!!] wants sanctions removed. No Thanks!”
[1] Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. See also: Comments on the termination of the nuclear agreement with Iran by D. Trump in GegenStandpunkt 2-18
[1] The Iranian opposition inside and outside Iran, like all other interested actors, must also get used to the fact that Trump’s desire to force Iran to surrender is not a predictable means for them: official appearances with representatives of the militant Mujahedin-e Khalq, for example by Trump’s friend Rudy Giuliani, alongside Pompeo’s instructions to his diplomats in January of this year, shortly after the killing of Iranian Major General Solaimani, not to overdo it with official contacts with the Iranian opposition. Pompeo’s reasoning: “Direct US government engagement with these groups could prove counterproductive to our policy goal of seeking a comprehensive deal with the Iranian regime that addresses its destabilizing behavior.”
[3] The American sanctions have hit Iran's petroleum industry predictably hard: The export of crude oil and gas collapsed by around 80%; the investments in the upstream and downstream sectors of the oil and gas industry, which were agreed on or planned primarily with European companies after the conclusion of the JCPOA, fail to materialize and with them the urgently needed maintenance, renovation and expansion of production and processing facilities, as well as, and even more so, the development of new oil and gas fields. Within a short time, the rest of the Iranian economy suffers from this slump in sales of the main export item.
[4] It is also quite fortunate that parliamentary elections are scheduled for February of this year. Even in the face of a national state of emergency characterized by economic shortages, hyperinflation, and violent poverty protests, these elections will not be canceled, but staged both internally and externally as a demonstration of the national will to resist. The Iranian leadership simply owes itself this Islamic republican proof that it is united with and rooted in the people in its anti-American resolve.
[5] “Iran withdraws its troops from Syria... They are also withdrawing their people from Yemen.”
[6] As early as the beginning of 2019, Trump announced: “Iran is no longer the same country... Iran now only wants to survive.”
[7] Trump dismissed Iran's appearance in Syria as not worthy of consideration with his famous comment “Frankly, the Iranians can do what they want there.”
[8] Iran’s Foreign Minister Zarif in an interview with Der Spiegel