Iran on the brink, as Greece implodes

By David Patrikarakos

One deadline. Two deals that needed to be struck. One that has already broken down and one for which time is running out.

Iran, a country of huge size, ancient culture and significant geopolitical importance, will face its own 21^st century D-Day on Tuesday — a reckoning that may well determine its future, most likely for a generation to come.
Iran is what diplomats and politicians, often with ostentatious displays of weary forbearance, describe as a “problem country.” Since 2002, when the crisis over its nuclear program began, many governments have argued that it may one day threaten the world with nuclear weapons. Iran is now seen as an existential threat to international stability and global security. Until now, it has remained largely defiant.
By a quirk of geopolitical fate, June 30 is a day of deadlines.
It is also when Greece, embroiled in its own existential crisis, was supposed to meet another debt repayment of €1.6 billion to the International Monetary Fund, the first of many coming due to its creditors, which also include the European Central Bank and various eurozone countries, notably Germany. But negotiations over the last week failed. Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras could see only one way out: to bypass both the creditors and his own party and appeal directly to the Greek electorate. Early Saturday, he went on Greek TV and announced that on July 5 the country would hold a referendum on the bailout deal on offer, the terms of which he described as amounting to “the humiliation of an entire nation.”
In response to Tsipras’ announcement the eurozone ministers rejected Greece’s request for an extension of the bailout deal that expires on Tuesday too. With the country headed for a default, June 30 might now mark Greece’s own D-Day: the beginning of its eventual exit from the eurozone.

One deadline. Two deals that needed to be struck. One that has already broken down and one for which time is running out.

On that very day Iran must reach a deal with the P5+1 (the five UN Security Council powers and Germany) over the latter’s attempts to curb its nuclear program. If no such deal is agreed, what happens next is, once again, anyone’s guess. But the direction in which Iran is likely to take its program, and the actions the U.S., or more worryingly a belligerent Israel and terrified Sunni Arab states might subsequently take, are as ominous as they are unclear.
One deadline. Two deals that needed to be struck. One that has already broken down and one for which time is running out. Iran and the P5+1 must come to deal at the end of the month, but on each side are hardliners, who, if they are not desperate to torpedo any chance of an agreement, make any sort of compromise far more difficult to reach.

Greece on the Gulf

Like Tsipras, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is stuck. On the one hand, he really needs a deal. Sanctions on Iran have isolated it financially and politically. The price of oil, the country’s main source of revenue has plummeted over the last year, from around $115 per barrel in June 2014 to $49 per barrel at the beginning of this year. The sanctions relief the P5+1 has offered in exchange for limits on his country’s nuclear program could go some way to fixing Iran’s lopsided and almost pathologically mismanaged economy.
But on the other hand, what’s the point of having an Islamic Republic if you’re not fundamentally opposed to the “Great Satan?” Iranians kicked out the Shah in 1979, in large part because they considered him a U.S. lapdog. The Mullahs came to power on an ideological anti-American and “anti-imperialist” platform. To come to détente with your avowed enemy — through compromising on a program that, moreover, you have consistently touted as a symbol of national resistance — is a dangerous political move.

Like Tsipras, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is stuck.

But it is one that Iranians seem to want. They elected the comparatively moderate Hassan Rouhani to the presidency in 2013, partly because a central tenet of his campaign was to reset Iran’s relations with the West. Iranians may be oppressed, but they understand the realities of global politics. They understand cause and effect. The nuclear program was becoming the source of too much isolation and too much suffering. Its cost had become too high.
So despite Khamenei’s instinctive anti-Western feelings, he allowed Rouhani to try to improve relations, first by lessening the overtly hostile rhetoric of Iran’s previous president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and then, in what has been a historic series of steps, directly engaging with the U.S. The results seemed almost spectacular. On April 2, 2015, Iran and the P5+1 finally agreed a framework for a deal in which Iran agreed, among other things, to reduce its number of uranium centrifuges from around 19,000 to just over 6,000, a major climbdown on what had previously been its major “red line.” The P5+1, satisfied that curbing the number of Iranian centrifuges (which reduces the amount of uranium Iran can enrich, thus making it harder to build a bomb) offered Iran the sanctions relief it craved. No deal was actually signed — that is to come, theoretically, on June 30 — but the broad parameters were agreed. Both sides seemed happy.
Which is when the real problems began. Two sets of hardliners, intent on actually preventing a deal, emerged to complicate the situation. This time they unequivocally denounced the agreement. If you thought there was no common ground between a right-wing U.S. Republican senator and a hardline Iranian Mullah you’d be wrong. Hossein Shariatmadari, editor of the conservative Iranian newspaper Kayhan made clear (with typical Persian oratorical flair) his distaste for the deal, claiming Iran had exchanged a “saddled horse” for one with a “broken bridle.”
Meanwhile, President Barack Obama had to fight his own hardliners, facing criticism from House Speaker John Boehner who described the deal as an “alarming departure” from the White House’s original goals and in no uncertain terms expressed his mistrust of Tehran in general. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also waded in, claiming what had been agreed would threaten both Israel and its neighbours.

Two sets of hardliners blocked an agreement. Meanwhile, President Obama had to fight his own hardliners.

And it’s not just the criticism that is a problem. Serious issues remain outstanding between the two sides. Iran has already accused the P5+1 of backtracking on the scope and speed of sanctions relief once a deal is agreed. The P5+1 in turn insists the terms are clear: sanctions will be removed gradually not instantly, as the Iranians appear to want. Rhetoric on both sides remains tough. Each remains fearful of those it must appease. Each knows that on June 30 some form of deal, or at least further progress, must be made to justify the huge amounts of political capital they have expended in pursuing such a difficult course.

A new kind of Middle Eastern politics

And in this lies perhaps the greatest chance of a success. If Rouhani fails to come to an agreement he will have failed the millions of Iranians who elected him largely on his promise to do so, much to the delight of hardliners in Iran who oppose the deal on principle.  For Obama, détente with Iran his been his primary foreign policy goal since he took office in 2008. To bring in from the cold a country with which the U.S. has not had any formal relations since the 1979 Islamic Revolution was never going to be easy. Obama has had to fight not only Congress, but Washington’s strongest allies in the region: Israel and Saudi Arabia.
The growing likelihood of a deal with Iran has reconfigured Middle Eastern politics. Israel and Saudi Arabia have been drawn closer together while the U.S. and Israel have grown further apart — a state of affairs that would once have been considered unthinkable. No deal has yet been reached, but its cost has already been significant. Obama understands all this. As he told the journalist Jeffrey Goldberg: “20 years from now, I’m still going to be around, God willing. If Iran has a nuclear weapon, it’s my name on this… I think it’s fair to say that in addition to our profound national-security interests, I have a personal interest in locking this down.”
His sentiments express perfectly what most guarantees the deal’s success: namely that both Rouhani and Obama have put their names to it personally. If no deal is reached Obama will have alienated a swath of allies, incurred the wrath of Republicans and, most importantly of all, destroyed his foreign policy legacy. Rouhani, meanwhile, will be viewed as a failed president before his first term has even ended.
On Sunday, Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry flew into Vienna to begin the process of drafting the final agreement. The sight of a smiling Zarif greeting a Kerry hobbling on crutches following a recent broken leg was, to many critics of the negotiations, symptomatic of a resurgent Iran and a crippled United States. Obama has until Tuesday to prove the doubters wrong. “Reaching the deal will be possible provided that the other side has the needed political will,” said Zarif. On that score at least, nothing is lacking.
What will happen to both Iran and Greece on June 30 will be momentous, though possibly for very different reasons. Greece will likely default; what happens next is anyone’s guess. Iran may finally, after 13 years, begin the process of normalization. Nothing is certain. But one thing is clear: come July 1, international politics will look very different indeed.