There is no loser other than Iran
There is no loser other than Iran is an analytical report about the JCPOA. As interactions between Iran and the U.S. over the final JCPOA agreement have reached the exchange of media statements by Iranian, American, and European officials following the end of the Vienna negotiations, optimism about the full revival of the JCPOA has at least faded in these days and the coming weeks. Many expected that after the first round of exchange of opinions between the two sides, an agreement would be reached, and there would be no serious disagreement preventing the signing of the text prepared by the European Union.
In the early days of September, optimism was tied to the coming weeks, not the early days of the following week. On one hand, American officials clearly emphasize their stance on maintaining the JCPOA’s functionality and the absence of any grounds or space for creating exceptions or undermining the expert control and inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. On the other hand, there are key American officials who have shown hope for reaching an agreement in media talks.
John Kirby, the spokesman for the U.S. National Security Council, is one of the most important officials who, in an interview with the Saudi news network Al Arabiya, expressed hope for both sides reaching the final point of understanding and signing the agreement. He defended the lifting of sanctions imposed on Iran, even in the face of questions and criticisms from Saudi and Israeli critics of the JCPOA.
Amid the media hustle of Iranian and American officials, experts and media activists occasionally remember the Russians. Ulyanov, Putin’s representative in Vienna, with his acrobatic tweets, hits both sides and interestingly, Ulyanov shows the least sensitivity towards his country’s army’s dangerous action of endangering the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, and comfortably directs his statements on this matter to the political confrontation between the West and Russia.
Where have we reached in this story of interactions? Will Iran, after all these diverse struggles to not reach an agreement, have a secure political and economic future? Iran’s legal and regular access to the energy market, free from sanctions, will naturally not be possible without the JCPOA. What will be the fate of Iran’s economy, our country’s industries, and Iran’s oil and gas industry under sanction conditions? Two concrete topics of the main winners of what happened before and what will happen in the absence of Iran in the JCPOA should be considered.
Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Trump
Donald Trump did not like the JCPOA because it had Obama’s name on it. Apart from that, the animosity he showed towards the agreement with Iran should be placed alongside his eagerness to start negotiations with Iran for another agreement. Up to this point, everyone knows and we know, but why did the maximum pressure policy, which was apparently supposed to be a tool to persuade Iran to such an agreement, take on aspects that essentially removed the grounds for agreement?
A scene from the game of winners in Trump’s behavior with the JCPOA should be watched in the 2018 reports on the game of oil production and pricing by Russia and Saudi Arabia. Two years before Russia and Saudi Arabia, under the shadow of the Corona crisis and the disruption of countries’ economic cycles on one hand and the change in energy consumption equations on the other, staged one of the most historic oil battles. In the middle of 2018, and in a process that was finalized in the last months of that year, they reached an agreement to stealthily increase their oil production.
This was in a situation where, with the start of Trump’s administration’s program to limit Iran’s oil sales and pretend to bring it to zero, oil prices had been on the rise for a long time. Before Saudi Arabia and Russia reached such an agreement, the Russians had already broken all records of oil production and the sale of various oil products in the history of Russia and the Soviet Union in mid-2018.
Specifically, Newsweek reported that Saudi and Russian officials had agreed to advance the policy of increasing production by taking advantage of Iran’s absence in the oil market and to roll in the expensive oil trade market decisively and without doubt, while pretending that the production increase was unrelated to the sanctions against Iran.
American oil companies also benefited from Iran’s sanction conditions. However, it was Saudi Arabia and Russia that became the unparalleled leaders of the market and were good oil allies until the Corona era and the oil battle between them. The damage inflicted on Iran’s economy was not compensated by Russia and naturally not by Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, the blessing of high oil revenue for Saudi Arabia and Russia meant that they found the grounds to develop and strengthen their oil industries.
Money brings more money, and maintaining and developing oil industries in producing countries is costly. Iran was the main loser in Trump’s game with the JCPOA, and the wear and tear inflicted on its oil industry and lost markets will take decades to recover, even if the sanctions are lifted.
Iran lost specific buyers, and one specific example was Sri Lanka, whose refineries and oil inputs were adjusted based on the quality and specific type of Iranian oil, and everything changed after Iran’s sanctions.
Russia, Saudi Arabia, and everyone
With its invasion of Ukraine, Russia overturned all energy market equations. Now, cheap Russian oil is the leader of the market, and various countries are officially and unofficially buyers of Russian oil. Even Saudi Arabia has made interesting purchases from Russian oil companies to supply oil for its power plants, which cannot be met by its own oil production network. Various African countries are developing their oil production programs.
Angola, for example, is a country whose contracts and programs for 2022 have been remarkable. Angola has been a significant seller of oil to China, which is no longer a serious buyer of Iranian oil. Russia, in the current situation and naturally with its political leverage and thanks to its related forces in Iran, has easily sidelined Iranian brokers selling Iranian oil who trade oil cargos on the water.
Naturally, these Iranian brokers who receive oil and trade it like street vendors on the water are indebted and grateful to the resistance economy directive that has only one tangible and executable instruction, which is nothing but controlling oil sales by the private sector. The current parliament, which has facilitated the delivery of oil to private sellers, that is, brokers, with the presence of cheap Russian oil and the Russian stick over Iran, the sanction conditions and Iran’s absence in the JCPOA spell the death of Iran’s national oil industry, and the capital belonging to the people becomes cheaper and cheaper in the hands of brokers.
Apart from oil, the prospect of Iran selling gas to Europe is also practically disappearing. Special contracts with Europe with Azerbaijan, Israel, Algeria, and one or two other countries have been signed or are being signed, and Qatar’s gas purchase contracts and programs have long been finalized, and energy companies in countries like Italy, in addition to previously finalized programs, may also finalize new purchase plans from Qatar. Opportunities that are being lost.
The JCPOA is the structure for controlling Iran’s nuclear program. We previously said that this structure is operational, and the latest reports from the International Atomic Energy Agency about Iran’s nuclear activities have recorded the exact number and type of centrifuges operating in the underground Natanz facility. The JCPOA is working, and Iran, which is sanctioned, is absent from it and merely plays the role of being under control.
Sanctions are blessings, and these blessings are for Russia and Saudi Arabia, and apparently everyone except the people of Iran. Even the Iranian regime will be a loser in the short term. An economy that is even reliant on the oil and gas industry needs serious income for the survival of that industry and the preservation and development of its energy industries, which cannot be achieved with sanctions.
What has been narrated focused on the oil and gas industries, and we did not discuss issues like strategic metals. If it comes to that area, and if all these are placed alongside strategic issues like attracting European industries and expanding European production lines inside Iran, the burned and burning opportunities will form an astonishing list. In our neighborhood, Turkey is dancing on the ashes of Iran’s burned opportunities.
To stay informed about the latest news related to the JCPOA nuclear agreement, visit the dedicated Iran Gate page named JCPOA negotiations.
