Analysis: Iran is in the Doldrums

The Iran nuclear deal is stuck in quicksand, almost unable to move, but certainly unable to get up, it lies dormant in a half way house between death and maybe, revival as the Americans debate what to do next goes on. 

To make it worse Iran is in the doldrums. It wants a revival of the deal but not at any price. Its leaders right from its hardline president Ebrahim Raisi to its Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian desperately want to clench a deal but are holding out for incentives. Iranian officials seek economic incentives, removal of sanctions and the scrapping of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC) from the US Terror List.

Quite honestly they may have legitimate rights. After all, how can you say to a country 'we are willing to revive the nuclear deal but we want to keep you under sanctions? Is it realistic and/or is it imaginable. For Iran, a deal would have to include integrating it into the international economy as was the case with the 2015 JCOPA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) accord signed under Barack Obama and then his Vice-President, the present Joe Biden. 

Iran desperately needs to be integrated into the global economy because of its deteriorating domestic constituency that is suffering from a bad economic situation that is getting worse with no light at the end of the tunnel. For weeks people have been demonstrating against exorbitantly high prices and lack of work. These protests have been nationwide, practically erupting in every major city in the country. 

The protests have been further exacerbated by two recent deadly developments: The collapse of a high rise building in the Arabic-dominated speakers of the city of Abadan which around at least 29 people were reported killed and is widely attributed to negligence and some are calling corruption due to the fact that many just ignore the country's building codes. The collapse of the building is dubbed as a scandal which Iranian leaders would have to deal with because this this not the first time it has happened with disastrous consequences. 

Another malaise is of course, the recent assassination of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard colonel Sayyad Khodai in Tehran outside his home by who else, but the Israelis, who practically told the Americans of their heinous action according to widespread media reports. What this effectively mean is that Iran has long become a playground for the Israelis particularly after the assassination of its top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in late 2020, who is deemed to be as the father of the "Iranian nuclear bomb" if ever there was one, or one that is going to be made. 

All these factors are persisting headaches for the Iranian leadership that is continually weary of the Israelis who keep striking its claimed bases and those of the Bashar Al Assad's regime in Syria. Like it or not there is an "underlying fight" between Iran and Israel that is likely to simmer short of an outright war with the proxies in the background. 

This brings us back to the stomps facing the Iran deal which has now been deadlocked since Russia started a war on the Ukraine since 24 February due to different reasons but mainly to the sanctions imposed on Moscow by the United States and western countries. It was claimed then the West (Britain, France, Germany plus the USA) plus Russia and China were in the last stages of reaching a deal and re-integrating the United States into the treaty which the then ex-US president Donald Trump forced out of in 2018. 

But the deadlock is music to the ears of Israeli who have been right from the start opposed to the 2015 deal. They where happy when the US was brought out of the deal and felt a sense of horror when the Biden administration took over and was negotiating with Tehran through the other parties to get back into the accord in Vienna. 

But since then there has been much procrastinations with both sides seeking to gain the maximum out of the deal. That is leading to much frustration least of all among Robert Malley, the US man in charge of the Iran nuclear file. He is reported to be indicating that the US may in the end be able to live without ever achieving a deal because of Iran's never ending requirements like demanding its IRGC would need to be removed from the terror list. 

Its touch-and-go at present. The US wants the "maximum" but in the end that maybe to much. Maybe Trump is getting his wish not only to get America out of what he called a bad deal but to keep it out permanently. The problem with that is Iran would continue to enrich uranium - presently at 60 percent and far higher than that agreed on in 2015 which was just under four percent - and very near to reaching a nuclear status. World experts say they can easily reach the 90% enrichment for the bomb. We on the other hand, will have to see what happens next and how its played out.