Rahman Ghahramanpour – Senior Middle East Analyst

The US president, after meeting with Kim Jong-un, said that North Korea was ready to demolish its nuclear establishments, but that has not happened. Apparently, Pyongyang’s approach to the agreement was different.

Trump’s trip to Britain and his interview with the Sun newspaper also tuned into a political scandal for British Prime Minister Theresa May, raising pressure on her.

Ultimately, after the diplomatic mismatch between Trump and Putin, the gap between Trump’s claims and the current realities of international politics has become much clearer. Such developments, one can conclude, would encourage many countries and their diplomats to doubt that Trump is reliable or accountable to his own words.

This will open a window for Iran to reinforce its current diplomacy and extract benefits from it. Should this trend linger on, the motivation of Europe, and consequently Russia, China and India, to cooperate with Iran would ratchet up, preventing those countries from being fully influenced by the United States.

Even at a later stage, countries like South Korea and Japan, that are more strongly aligned with Washington, might have second thoughts about imposing sanctions against Iran. Therefore, one can suggest that after the US revocation of the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), the sanctions would not be fully welcomed by Washington allies and other countries in the way that Trump has predicted. This can be considered as an opportunity for Iran.

Under such circumstances, the question now is how Iran could take advantage of this opportunity while considering some provisions and admitting that the existing conditions are tough not only for Tehran, but also for Europe.

The European Union foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, announced that Europe could not be aligned with the United States on JCPOA and at the same time several European officials have openly declared in various occasions that Europe is serious about distancing itself from Washington as far as JCPOA is concerned. Such developments should be regarded as an opportunity for Iran; in turn, Tehran should make efforts to encourage Europe to cooperate with Tehran. This, however, does not mean that Iran should ignore its demands.

 Today, we are witnessing that Europeans are more serious in dealing with Iran’s conditions in their negotiations than they were during 2003 to 2005 because of their experiences from previous talks with Tehran. They seemingly feel that they can no longer buy time in their dialogue with Tehran as they did before. 

This European view, on the one hand, is considered an opportunity for Iran and should be exploited properly. On the other hand, Iran has a series of demands that cannot be overlooked. Therefore, in order to use the new atmosphere, Iran must examine how much it can meet the requirements for this situation. Namely, if Europe, Russia, China and India are ready to resist against US sanctions, Tehran, in turn, should provide the groundwork for channeling money by the above-mentioned countries to Iran, or, for instance, hinder additional technical barriers in this process.

Ultimately, under the existing circumstances, since it has become clear for Europe and many other countries that Trump is not trustworthy and cannot bring about a consensus, the important issue is that a potential opportunity has been generated for Iran in the current situation. Should Tehran seek to generate profits from this opportunity, it must abide by certain parts of the requirements stated above, and at the same time provide the necessary conditions for this to happen without disregarding the principles and policies of the country so as to effectively counteract US sanctions.