The enemy of the JCPOA is responsible for the JCPOA
The enemy of the JCPOA is responsible for the JCPOA
The footsteps of Trump have already stirred reactions around the world. Politicians and theorists have become active to find a way to deal with this unpredictable figure and unconventional president. Among them, politicians and decision-makers from countries that experienced Trump’s policies and approaches more than others during his first term are more concerned about his return. Although they try to deny their worries outwardly, this effort is futile, and the truth eventually surfaces.
The recent interview with Ali Shamkhani, the former Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, is one of these signs. He is the third former Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council who has come forward in recent weeks, attempting to influence the rapid course of Iran’s foreign developments through political and media activities.
Before him, Ali Larijani, after a period of silence and political sidelines due to his disqualification in the presidential election, came forward. On one hand, he supported the new government’s approach to reviving negotiations with the West and beyond, laying the groundwork for talks with Trump. On the other hand, as an advisor to the Supreme Leader and his messenger to crisis-hit countries like Syria and Lebanon, he tried to appear effective and active in practice.
The second former Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council who has become more active in these weeks and, as the government spokesperson says, has come out of the shadows into the light, is Saeed Jalili. However, Jalili has never been much of a shadow dweller.
He and his anxious allies, from the early 2010s to today, whenever they sensed the possibility of an agreement or even serious negotiations between Iran and the West, have come forward with all their might and used every tool at their disposal to thwart Iranian negotiators.
Jalili and his allies, not only during the Rouhani administration and the JCPOA negotiations, used all their resources, from the special commission of the ninth parliament and repeated TV interviews to organizing conferences and gatherings in universities, streets, and seminaries to prolong the negotiation process and render the final agreement futile. Even when the Raisi government came to power and Ali Bagheri, Jalili’s close associate, became responsible for the negotiations and reached the brink of reviving the JCPOA in the summer of 2021, they came forward again. Through secret letter campaigns and overt media and parliamentary maneuvers, they stopped the process at the last minute, promising America’s decline and a harsh European winter.
Naturally, Jalili and the parliamentary hardliners, who acted this way with Raisi and Bagheri, their political allies, will do whatever they can today, when their electoral rival holds the government, to stifle any new negotiations and agreements in the cradle. The actions of the parliamentary hardliners against Mohammad Javad Zarif are a clear symbol of these movements, but they are not all.
The harsh attacks by Kayhan on the release of news about secret negotiations between Iran and Elon Musk were a clear sign that right-wing hardliners do not want the taboo of negotiating with Trump to be broken at any level.
Subsequently, the publication of Zarif’s article in Foreign Affairs provided another subject for them to intensify attacks on the president and his strategic deputy, with some parliamentary hardliners and Twitter activists even entering the phase of open and direct insults.
It was in these circumstances that Jalili himself took action, using Student Day as a pretext to go from one university to another, speaking against Pezeshkian, Zarif, Rouhani, the JCPOA, and the possibility of new negotiations and agreements.
Now, apparently, it’s the turn of the third former Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, Ali Shamkhani, who took on this responsibility during Rouhani’s first government but remained in this position during his second government against Rouhani’s wishes. The conflict between Rouhani and Shamkhani and Rouhani’s opposition to his continued presence in the Supreme National Security Council was such that Rouhani did not sign the extension of his tenure, and throughout the second term, he addressed him merely as Mr. Shamkhani in correspondence, not recognizing him as the Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council.
Shamkhani had previously faced hidden and even open confrontation with the then-president. For instance, during Khatami’s presidency, when Shamkhani was his defense minister, he stood against him in the 2001 elections, joining and uniting with eight other candidates to overthrow the sitting president.
Although Shamkhani’s conflict with Rouhani was not as overt as his confrontation with Khatami, anyone with the slightest knowledge of the internal affairs of the government and its structure knew the direction of each. The hidden conflict between Shamkhani and Rouhani became more evident as the days of the twelfth government drew to a close.
Especially after the nightmare of Trump faded from Iran’s political sky in the fall of 2020, and with Joe Biden’s victory, Iranian moderates led by Rouhani and Zarif prepared to revive the JCPOA.
But it was in those circumstances that the eleventh parliament, led by Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, arrived and, by passing the so-called Strategic Action Plan to Lift Sanctions, effectively stood not against the outgoing Trump but against the incoming Biden, putting the American side, as Rouhani put it, in a position where an easy return to the JCPOA by the new government was prevented.
Now, four years after those days, Shamkhani has returned to the field.
Having spent nearly a year in obscurity, he has returned to claim, on one hand, that he is still responsible for the nuclear file and, on the other, to openly stand against Rouhani and Zarif, claiming they had no plan to deal with Trump, revealing that he was allied with Ghalibaf and the eleventh parliamentarians in the process of drafting and passing the Strategic Action Plan and obstructing Rouhani and Zarif’s path to revive the JCPOA.
The point, however, is that Shamkhani, like Ghalibaf and other supporters of the anti-JCPOA parliamentary law, claims this action was against Trump and to confront his maximum pressure and sanctions. However, the eleventh parliament passed this law when Trump had lost the election, effectively tying Biden and Rouhani’s hands and ensuring that the U.S. exit from the JCPOA, as Trump’s legacy, remained until the end of Biden’s administration.
Today, Shamkhani is practically on the same path that Ghalibaf, as his ally, is on against Rouhani. In reality, Shamkhani is trying to renew his alliance with Ghalibaf against Rouhani and Zarif in the fall of 2020, this time to unite against Pezeshkian and Zarif and, of course, Larijani.
In other words, Shamkhani’s sudden and unexpected emergence in the political scene stems from the same source as Ghalibaf’s recent rightward shift and his maneuvers against Zarif, emphasizing the enforcement of the hijab law.
If Ghalibaf defines his political position, contrary to his slogans about unity, not in alliance and support of Pezeshkian but somewhere between him and Jalili, and is active against the government’s domestic policy goals, Shamkhani has defined a similar role for himself in foreign policy and sanctions relief, positioning himself somewhere between the other two former Secretaries of the Supreme National Security Council, Larijani and Jalili.
Shamkhani neither appears as Larijani does, as a supporter and ally of the JCPOA revival and an ally of Rouhani, Zarif, and Pezeshkian, nor does he sincerely play the role of an opponent of the JCPOA and the resumption of negotiations like Jalili.
It seems Ghalibaf and Shamkhani are playing the role of a third line, between the moderate line one and the hardline line two, a title rooted in the alignments of the early revolution but today represented by different faces and forces. Ghalibaf and Shamkhani are the most prominent symbols of the new line three.
Within the framework of this new alignment, Ghalibaf, on one hand, outwardly displays unity but in practice aids the Stability Front, while Shamkhani, on the other hand, presents himself as a supporter of negotiations and a defender of the JCPOA but in practice obstructs its revival and implementation.
In 2020, this was done with the Strategic Action Plan. We must see what tricks the overt and covert opponents of sanctions relief and JCPOA revival have up their sleeves in 2024.