Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei recently rejected an offer by US President Donald Trump to resume talks on Iran’s nuclear program.
“If an agreement is accompanied by coercion and its outcome is predetermined, it is not a deal, but imposition and harassment,” said the 86-year-old, who, as the political and religious leader of the Islamic Republic, has the final say in all matters.
At the same time, Khamenei rejected Trump’s claim that the US had destroyed Iran’s nuclear capabilities.
“The Islamic Republic believes it can score points by showing strength,” Menashe Amir, a Middle East expert and veteran journalist, told DW. However, “the strategy of demonstrating strength could backfire on Iran this time,” he added.
Amir said Iran has lost much of its regional influence, with Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthi rebels and proxy groups in Iraq and Syria all significantly weakened.
If the Iranian leadership is not prepared to at least publicly distance itself from its confrontational policy toward the West, this could make another war inevitable, he warned.
Since it took power in the 1979 revolution, the leadership of the Islamic Republic has refused to recognize Israel’s right to exist, and regularly threatens to destroy it.
In June, Israeli and US forces attacked Iranian nuclear facilities in a 12-day war. Western countries have long accused Iran of secretly working on nuclear weapons.
Tehran has denied the accusation, and claims its nuclear program is exclusively for civilian purposes and energy production. However, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has repeatedly warned Iranian uranium enrichment is approaching weapons grade.
Nuclear inspections off for now amid sanctions
Following the reinstatement of all UN sanctions against Iran with the activation of the snapback mechanism by the E3 states (Germany, France and United Kingdom) on August 28, Iran has said it considers cooperation with the IAEA to be superfluous.
Earlier this week, Ali Larijani, head of the Supreme National Security Council, said Iran would not implement an agreement concluded in Cairo with the IAEA under Egyptian mediation that had called for Iran to cooperate with the agency.
However, in a statement to the IRNA news agency he added that any IAEA request for nuclear inspections would need to be submitted “for review” to the Secretariat of the Supreme National Security Council.
“There is no doubt that the risk of conflict is very high, but statements by Ali Khamenei and Ali Larijani show that the Islamic Republic does not yet want to completely renounce the agreement,” Hamidreza Azizi, Middle East expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, told DW.
“They fear that a rash move could give Israel or the US a reason to launch a military strike,” Azizi added.
Azizi said that even before the 12-day war with Israel, the Iranian leadership had threatened to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
However, Tehran did not carry out this threat. Instead, it attempted to reach an agreement with the IAEA to prevent the snapback mechanism from being activated — in vain.
A similar situation is playing out today, Azizi said.
“The leadership of the Islamic Republic is in a dilemma. On the one hand, it does not want its previous threats to appear ineffective and empty, but on the other hand, any harsh and ruthless action could provoke an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities.”
Does Iran’s regime have a plan?
According to Azizi, Iranian security chief Larijani is trying to find a middle ground, as there is currently no clear path forward.
“What we are currently witnessing is once again a kind of crisis management strategy by the Islamic Republic, which simply wants to buy time until a solution is found,” he said.
And there are signs that channels of communication between Iran and the West remain open. Indirect negotiations between Iran and the US have not yet been broken off, and Iran is also negotiating with Europe in parallel.
A potential prisoner exchange between France and Iran is also a sign that dialogue between Tehran and the West has not completely broken down.
On Thursday, Iran’s Foreign Ministry confirmed the conditional release of Mahdieh Esfandiari, an Iranian citizen jailed in France on charges of promoting terrorism on social media.
France and Iran had previously talked about exchanging Esfandiari for a French couple detained in Iran. However, it is currently unclear if the French citizens will be released.
Iran regularly uses the detention of Western citizens as a means of exerting pressure to enforce its political demands and obtain concessions in negotiations.
This article was originally written in German
