News Desk |
Iran has turned down the talks offer from the U.S Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, as a mere “wordplay” and “different means to pursue the hidden agenda” while stating the United States needs to end the economic war against Iran first. Earlier, the heightened tensions between Iran and the United States, which had increased the stakes of armed conflict in the Persian Gulf, were diffused because of a paradigm shift from the United States which offered talks with no preconditions. “We are prepared to engage in a conversation with no preconditions. We are ready to sit down with them,” Mike Pompeo said in a news conference in Switzerland.
Iranian President Hasan Rouhani has termed it as a victory for its country and said that Iran is ready to negotiate provided that the United States agrees and rejoins the 2015 nuclear deal. “The enemies sometimes say they have conditions for negotiations with Iran … but in recent weeks they said they have no conditions. They threatened us as if they were a military superpower, but now they say they do not seek war,” he said.
It is due to this strategic victory Iran can afford to reproach the United States, otherwise, Iran would have stuck to the faintest prospects of reviving its ailing economy, let alone snubbing the offer of direct talks.
Obama administration, in association with the United Kingdom, Germany, France along with Russia and China, had brokered a deal with the Iranian regime in which the latter abandoned its nuclear program in exchange of relief from crunching economic sanctions. However, Donald Trump, responding to the pressure from key strategic allies of the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, walked out of Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), re-imposing sanctions over Iran and leaving the country’s economy once again in shambles.
A Victory for Iran
A small nation in South West Asia, which is nowhere near to the military might of the United States, managed to push back the threat of escalation which in case of conflict would have been catastrophic for Iran. Despite the U.S narrative that the recent attack on the oil tankers in Fujairah was carried out on Iran’s behest, it could not retaliate in a sterner manner rather the United States took a step back and called for talks with Iran without any precondition. Part of the success Iran has had is attributed to President Donald Trump himself who, despite being pushed for confrontation with Iran by his aides such as John Bolton, refused to wage war on Iran.
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It is due to this strategic victory Iran can afford to reproach the United States, otherwise, Iran would have stuck to the faintest prospects of reviving its ailing economy, let alone snubbing the offer of direct talks.
Time to Make the Call
For the time being, it is in the political interest of Iran to act tough, for both domestic and international audiences, but eventually, it will have to rely upon diplomacy as a mean to end the crisis. Despite showing restraint, the United States has little to lose in the war of nerves as compared to Iran, which has the whole of its economic wheel seized due to the economic embargo on the export of its most abundant commodity, and valued at the same time, oil.
Read more: US-Iran truce is only possible if Iran stops applying conditions
European powers that were the part of the earlier agreement are already willing to act as the mediators and from here onwards back-channel diplomacy via European countries would lead to the settlement of the dispute between Iran and the United States. One of the strategically who had been pushing the United States for war with Iran – Saudi Arabia – has learned the hard way that war with Iran is not economically feasible as KSA is already struggling to maintain its growth due to plummeting oil prices in the international market.