The ongoing talks between Iran and the United States are steaming ahead with the latest round held on 26 April in Muscat. The first two rounds couldn't have gone better, with both sides expressing optimism and hope for progress.
In the space of a few weeks, the negotiating climate between Iran and the US has been transformed. Both sides are clearly interested in a deal, even more than they were during the Obama administration, when talks held between 2013-15 led to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) deal.
For the US, a deal will ensure Iran won’t get nuclear weapons and will "behave" better regionally. For Iran, the lifting of even some of the sanctions on the country’s economy could be life-saving.
But if these dynamics were also at work in 2013-15, things are now much more urgent. Iran’s nuclear programme has advanced so much that Tehran is now considered a nuclear threshold state. If the talks fail, the alternative won’t be just more economic pressure on Iran, but military attacks by Israel and the United States.
This explains the strong motivations in both Washington and Tehran for a deal. But there are many stakeholders, both in these capitals and beyond, who might worry about the final shape of a deal or outright prefer military attacks. They’ve been raising their voice against the talks, but compared to the 2013-15 period, the main stakeholders are much favourable to a deal.
Let’s start with the politics of both countries. In Iran, the hardliners who have traditionally sought to halt any progress in Iran-US talks now find themselves politically hampered. President Masud Pezeshkian belongs to the reformist camp, while the speaker of the parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, is a conservative who is close to the president on foreign policy issues. He is no friend of the hardliners.
Balancing interests
For his part, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei still holds most of the power, but he has learnt that he must balance out between different interests in the regime and society and has allowed the talks to go ahead. In an incredible speech on 24 April, on the anniversary of the passing of a Shiite Imam, Khamenei gave a long account of Shiite history, explaining why Shiite imams often had to resort to peace with adversaries and patience.
Even major hardliners, like Saeed Jalili, a former chief nuclear negotiator who lost the presidential elections last year, have been rather muted in their criticism of the Iranian negotiators. After a few months' absence, Jalili recently resumed his weekly speeches, but most of his comments on talks with the US remained limited to critiquing the 2015 deal, rather than the current talks. Jalili’s supporters had claimed that a major official of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) would attend the talks, but he was a no-show.
Iran’s state TV is perhaps the most important institution controlled by hardliners, including a brother of Jalili who serves as its deputy head. The state TV has come under massive domestic criticism in recent days. First, it aired comedy programmes criticising Saudi officials, which was seen as harmful to the recent improvement in Tehran-Riyadh ties, seen as critical to any eventual success in Iranian-US talks. Then, in a family programme, it featured a guest who said inappropriate words about Abu Bakr, the first Muslim caliph and a holy name amongst the Sunnis.
This was a clear provocation against millions of Iranian Sunnis and people of regional Arab countries who are mostly Sunni-majority. The head of the state TV, Peyman Jebeli, apologised, and several officials in the broadcaster have been fired, and some are being prosecuted. The hardliners are learning the limit of their power the hard way.
Any opposition to the talks is also hindered by the fact that they clearly serve the Iranian economy. The mere existence of positive news coming out of the negotiations has rallied the Iranian rial, raising its value vis-à-vis the US dollar by more than 20%. Lifting of the sanctions won’t cause an overnight miracle for Iran’s beleaguered economy, but it could lead to significant advances.
It would be crucial in the medium and long term, a leadership member of Iran’s Chamber of Commerce recently said in an interview. At the very least, he said, it would reduce transaction costs and lead to a modest but significant increase in Iranian commodity exports, such as carpets, and the importation of necessary Western goods, like technology.
