Tehran- “The region is teetering on the brink of an abyss between two paths: a diplomatic one gaining unprecedented momentum, and a military one whose fires have not yet cooled,” Iranian citizen Ali Reza (72 years old – retired) comments on the last hours of time available for diplomacy. He believes that in the current complex scene, the question has become whether “diplomacy will triumph or is the region on the verge of a major explosion?” The master of the situation in Tehran.
In the final hours before the expiration of the American deadline to reach a nuclear agreement with Iran, Ali Reza hopes – in his speech to Al Jazeera Net – that Tehran will agree to the final version of the agreement that the regional mediations convey to it, or “respond with the military and other capabilities it possesses to remove the specter of war from its people.” Then he is silent for a while and continues, “I wonder what remains in its arsenal for deterrence after two wars imposed on it?”
In a field tour conducted by Al Jazeera Net in a number of areas of Tehran, it appears that a state of cautious anticipation is prevailing over the city, mixed with mounting popular anxiety about the country sliding into a third round of war.
Popular obsessions
Avina (31 years old), a doctoral student at the University of Tehran, provides a disturbing diagnosis of the situation in her country by saying that “the economic and social space in Iran is immersed in a state of neither war nor peace,” blaming the policies followed responsible for compounding the crisis.
Awina added in her interview with Al Jazeera Net, “If there is a way out of the bottleneck, we must, regardless of the major dilemma represented by American demands, work hard to strengthen the internal front, and the relevant authorities must appreciate the steadfastness of millions in the night gatherings in public squares, not remain prisoners of constant talk about mediation messages alone.”
Then you wonder: What prevents us from negotiating with the enemy face to face? Warning that the continuation of the current situation may lead to sparking a new wave of protests.
While state television screens light up with headlines calling for “national unity in the face of threats,” her colleague Elha (28 years old) recalls bloody scenes from past protests, stressing that “similar events could be repeated overnight, and this is not a distant possibility,” stressing that the Iranian decision-maker cannot bet on the patience of the street indefinitely.
Elha concludes her statement – to Al Jazeera Net – with an explicit call to read the Iranian scene from a double angle: “military pressure from abroad and economic pressure from within,” adding that betting exclusively on negotiations with America to improve the living situation without rebuilding the real economy will be of no use even if it results in an agreement.
As for the fifty-year-old man, Jaafar, the owner of a large store in central Tehran, he says, “The Americans and the Israelis want to strip us of everything. They struck our nuclear facilities, and we no longer have anything to frighten them with except the Strait of Hormuz, but I fear throwing away this card as we did with the nuclear file.”
He continued in a low voice, as if he was afraid that someone would hear him: “In the previous two rounds of the confrontation, we were content with formal strikes. If the matter is repeated and other parties participate in the operations to reopen the Strait, lax response this time will mean losing the remaining card.”
Negotiating tools
We asked Jaafar why he considered the Strait of Hormuz his country’s last card. He said that it was “not the only one, but it is the most powerful weapon remaining in Tehran’s hand,” but he quickly added, “But it is a double-edged sword… Closing the Strait may lead to a military escalation with undesirable consequences, and neglecting it without actual use, or through implausible threats, will strip Iran of any future pressure cards.”
In a related context, political researcher Afifa Abedi presents a different analytical reading of the scene, in which she sees that the American verbal escalation is not necessarily a prelude to a comprehensive war, but rather a negotiating tool to improve Washington’s conditions at the table, expressing her belief that the increase in contacts and mediations in light of the escalation of hostile American rhetoric against Iran, reveals the fact that many of the main actors in this crisis do not actually want the fighting to resume.
Speaking to Al Jazeera Net, Abdi believes that Washington and Tel Aviv, despite the apparent rhetorical escalation, “are fully aware that a new round of war will not bring them quick gains, and that any long-term war will cost them a heavy strategic price,” adding that many of the public threats are nothing but an attempt to raise the bargaining ceiling in the negotiations, and not an actual declaration of an imminent war.
Objective reasons
In contrast to the American threats, Abedi believes that there are objective reasons that make Tehran not keen on returning to the war zone, including:
- First, Iran was not the initiator of this war, and therefore does not bear responsibility for starting it.
- Secondly, Tehran has paid a very high price in the field for demands that it is still seeking to achieve through negotiations, making it impossible to back away from those demands.
Amid this field stagnation and the difference in positions, Abedi expects a pragmatic scenario that will have the greatest degree of consensus, explaining that due to this field blockage, the two parties have turned to exchanging messages and indirect negotiations, because it is simply less costly for everyone.
The same researcher expects that this path will result in “a temporary agreement, at least in the short term, to extend the period of negotiations instead of a comprehensive agreement or a complete collapse of the diplomatic path.”
However, despite these cautious expectations of extending the negotiating track, Abdi does not rule out the emergence of “obstacles of a different kind,” warning that “the possibility of sabotage interventions aimed at thwarting the negotiating track remains strong.”
It emphasizes a geopolitical fact that “any kind of agreement will not end the state of chronic hostility and rivalry between the parties, and therefore any potential settlement will be nothing more than a tool for managing tension and high costs, and not a magic solution that turns the page on the conflict.”
Deterrence stick
Between an American threat to resume bombing Iran within hours or days if an agreement is not reached, and an Iranian promise to expand the circle of fighting outside the region, political expert Saeed Shawwardi believes that Iran “will not back down from its nuclear program one iota” no matter how great the military and diplomatic pressures are, stressing that military attacks and assassinations are of no use to Iran, which possesses the knowledge and technical ability to restore what the war machine has destroyed.
Speaking to Al Jazeera Net, Shawwardi considers that the American insistence on zeroing out enrichment and dismantling the nuclear program is not only a negotiating demand, but an attempt to snatch the “stick of deterrence” that protects the Iranian people from existential threats, especially after two fierce wars that Tehran experienced within a matter of months.
From these two wars, the Iranian researcher draws a lesson that “no one will come to defend Iran,” and reveals his conviction that the nuclear program, even in its peaceful context, is the only deterrent that prevented Washington and Tel Aviv from using non-conventional weapons, which is reinforced by the policy of “nuclear ambiguity” that Tehran is pursuing regarding the true status of its capabilities after the two wars.
The second card, according to the same spokesman, is the Strait of Hormuz, where Tehran has not only controlled the vital passage since the last war, but also established declared mechanisms for the passage of ships, and gradually succeeded in managing global public opinion and defusing the intense opposition from other countries, while Washington failed to reopen it by force and was embroiled in a dilemma that pushed it to search for a way out.
Shawwardi pointed out that Tehran is now able to use the Strait to impose counter-sanctions on countries involved in US sanctions, which doubles the impossibility of abandoning this card.
He concludes that Washington’s insistence on returning Hormuz to pre-war status and zeroing out enrichment are the two obstacles that could lead the negotiations to a dead end, warning that Tehran’s neglect of the Strait card and the nuclear program together will mean existential challenges after any agreement, as it must control them to reap their positive effects on security, the economy, and regional standing.
