The Enemy of the JCPOA is Responsible for the JCPOA

The footsteps of Trump have already provoked reactions. Politicians and theorists around the world have been activated 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 in appearance, this effort is futile and the truth becomes evident.

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 stepped into the arena in recent weeks, attempting to influence Iran’s rapidly changing foreign developments through political and media activities.

Before him, Ali Larijani, after a period of silence and political sidelining due to his disqualification in the presidential elections, came forward. On one hand, he engaged in candid media discussions supporting the new government’s approach to reviving negotiations with the West and even paving the way for talks with Trump. On the other hand, as the Leader’s advisor and his messenger to crisis-stricken countries like Syria and Lebanon, he tried to be 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 puts it, has come from the shadows to the light, is Saeed Jalili. Jalili, however, has never been entirely in the shadows.

He and his worried allies have, since the early 2010s, whenever they sensed the possibility of an agreement or even serious negotiations between Iran and the West, entered the field with all their might, using every tool at their disposal to thwart Iranian negotiators.

Jalili and his allies not only during Rouhani’s government 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 religious schools, to prolong the negotiation process and portray the final agreement as fruitless, but even when Raisi’s government came to power and Ali Bagheri, Jalili’s close ally, became responsible for the negotiations and came close to reviving the JCPOA in the summer of 2021, they re-entered the field. Through secret letters and overt media and parliamentary campaigns, they stopped the process at the last minute, predicting the decline of America and a harsh winter for Europe.

Naturally, Jalili and the parliamentary worriers who acted this way with Raisi and Bagheri, their political allies, will do everything they can today, when their electoral rival holds the government, to stifle any new negotiations and agreements in their inception. The aggressive actions of parliamentary hardliners against Mohammad Javad Zarif are a clear manifestation of these movements, but not all of it.

The harsh attacks by Kayhan on the publication 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.

Furthermore, the publication of Zarif’s article in Foreign Affairs provided another subject for them to intensify their attacks on the president and his strategic deputy, with some parliamentary worriers and Twitter activists even resorting to direct and public insults.

It was in these circumstances that Jalili himself also took action, using Student Day as a pretext to move from one university to another, speaking out against Pezeshkian, Zarif, Rouhani, the JCPOA, and the possibility of new negotiations and agreements.

Now, it seems it’s the turn of the third former Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, Ali Shamkhani, who took on this responsibility in Rouhani’s first government but remained in this position against Rouhani’s wishes during his second term. The conflict between Rouhani and Shamkhani and Rouhani’s opposition to his continued presence in the Supreme National Security Council was so intense that he did not sign the extension of his responsibility, and throughout his second presidential term, he referred to him simply as Mr. Shamkhani in correspondence, as he did not recognize him as the Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council.

Shamkhani, of course, had a history of hidden and even open confrontation with the then-president. During Khatami’s presidency, when Shamkhani was his Minister of Defense, he stood against him in the 2000 elections, aligning 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 dynamics of the government and its structure knew where each stood. The hidden conflict between Shamkhani and Rouhani became more apparent as the days of the twelfth government drew to a close.

Especially after the nightmare of Trump left the skies of Iranian politics in the fall of 2020, and with Joe Biden’s victory, Iran’s moderates, led by Rouhani and Zarif, prepared to revive the JCPOA.

However, it was in those conditions 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, and as Rouhani said, put the American side in a position that made an easy return to the JCPOA by the new government impossible.

Now, four years after those days, Shamkhani has once again stepped into the field.

Having spent nearly a year in obscurity, he has returned to, on one hand, claim that he is still responsible for the nuclear file, and on the other, this time openly stand against Rouhani and Zarif, claiming they had no plan to deal with Trump and revealing that he was an ally of Ghalibaf and the eleventh parliamentarians in the process of drafting and passing the Strategic Action Plan and obstructing Rouhani and Zarif’s efforts to revive the JCPOA.

The point, however, is that like Ghalibaf and other supporters of the anti-JCPOA law, Shamkhani claims this was an action against Trump and to confront his maximum pressure and sanctions. However, the eleventh parliament passed this law when Trump had lost the election, and effectively with this law, they tied the hands of Biden and Rouhani, ensuring that America’s exit from the JCPOA, as Trump’s legacy, remained until the end of Biden’s term.

Today, Shamkhani is practically on the same path that Ghalibaf, as his ally, is on against Rouhani. In fact, Shamkhani is trying to rekindle his alliance with Ghalibaf against Rouhani and Zarif in the fall of 2020, and this time to unite against Pezeshkian, 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 actions against Zarif, emphasizing the enforcement of the Hijab law.

If Ghalibaf has defined his political position, contrary to his slogans about unity, not in alignment and support of Pezeshkian, but somewhere between him and Jalili, and has become active against the government’s domestic policy slogans and goals, Shamkhani has also defined a similar role for himself in foreign policy and lifting sanctions, positioning himself somewhere between the two other former Secretaries of the Supreme National Security Council, Larijani and Jalili.

Shamkhani neither appears as a supporter and ally of the JCPOA revival policy and a partner of Rouhani, Zarif, and Pezeshkian, like Larijani, nor does he honestly play the role of an opponent of the JCPOA and the resumption of negotiations like Jalili.

It seems that Ghalibaf and Shamkhani are playing the role of Line 3, a concept rooted in the early revolution alignments, but today different faces and forces represent this line. Ghalibaf and Shamkhani are the most prominent symbols of the new Line 3.

Within the framework of such a new alignment, on one hand, Ghalibaf outwardly displays unity while in practice supporting the Stability Front, and on the other hand, Shamkhani also presents himself as a supporter of negotiation and a defender of the JCPOA, but in practice, blocks its revival and implementation.

In 2020, this was done with the Strategic Action Plan. It remains to be seen what tricks the overt and covert opponents of lifting sanctions and reviving the JCPOA have up their sleeves in 2024.