Alison Meuse, Asia Times: When the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was inked between Iran and its longtime Western rivals in July 2015, it was not simply a nuclear non-proliferation treaty – it was the invitation for Iran to retake its rightful seat at the table of nations.
Iran, a vast country with a history of empire, invention, culture and trade, would scale down its nuclear ambitions in exchange for engagement, an investment in its educated 80-million-strong population.
It was not only a significant undertaking for the Obama administration, part of a strategic vision of a regional and global adjustment but a risky, sustained step by the government of Hassan Rouhani.
In the months and years that followed, major Western corporations signaled that the future of the Middle East would go through Tehran.
Major oil companies, car manufacturers, and airlines were at the ready. None more so than the French oil giant Total, which in July 2017 led a consortium in signing a US$4.8 billion deal to develop the South Pars gas field – the world’s largest.
Total called it “a major contract which would contribute to the development of relations between Europe and Iran.” It was slated to begin supplying the Iranian domestic market by 2021.
Sanctions were already brewing across the Atlantic.
Natural allies
Iran – veteran negotiator Henry Kissinger has said – is a “natural ally” of the United States. A geographically and economically diverse country with an educated and dynamic middle class and powerful armed forces, it was for decades a pillar of US foreign policy in the Middle East.
Those relations were ruptured with the Islamic Revolution of 1979 when Shah Reza Pahlavi was overthrown and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini rose to power.
In 1953, Washington had kneecapped Iran’s democracy with a CIA-orchestrated coup against the secular, elected prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh. His chief offense was to nationalize Iran’s oil industry and to reject British and American subservience.
When the pendulum swung once again against the West, it was Islamist revolutionaries in the lead.
It took nearly three decades for a US leader to prioritize a total reset with Iran. That was Barack Obama.
In 2007, then-candidate Obama told The New York Times he was ready to sit down with the leadership in Tehran.
“I think it is important for us to send a signal that we are not hellbent on regime change, just for the sake of regime change, but expect changes in behavior. And there are both carrots and there are sticks available to them for those changes in behavior,” he said.
Addressing the Muslim world from Cairo in June 2009, Obama recognized the role the US had played in the overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected government half a century before, and called for talks without preconditions.
As a two-term president, Obama would devote significant political capital to securing an accord with Iran – part of a strategic vision for a recalibrated future of the region and America’s relations with it. Secretary of state John Kerry spent hours negotiating with Iran’s top diplomat, Javad Zarif, with a clear air of respect for his counterpart.
Arch-foes Saudi Arabia and Iran would need to learn to “share the neighborhood,” Obama told Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic in the wake of the 2015 signing.
During his last meeting with King Salman in April 2016, Obama encouraged the Saudi ruler to engage in diplomacy with the Iranians rather than proxy wars and power struggles. The king’s son, the crown prince known as MBS, could not contain his outrage later in the meeting, according to a top Obama adviser in the room.
The Iran deal, Obama’s detractors maintained, came at the expense of a decades-old alliance with the OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia. And despite a $38 billion aid package to the Israeli armed forces, the deal was viewed as an abandonment of Israel as well.
But by then, the Saudis had already identified a new political brand on the horizon: Donald Trump.
Total to Saudi
In the heat of the 2016 presidential campaign, perhaps no foreign-policy issue served as more of a foil for Trump against Obama than the “bad deal” his rival had struck with Iran.
While the flashy real-estate developer had argued against American meddling in the Middle East, breaking with Republican Party orthodoxy to condemn the George W Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq, Iran was another story.
A meeting between President Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman in March 2017 was hailed as a “turning point” in Riyadh, whose leadership was finally back in lockstep with the White House over a common desire to stifle Iran’s regional and global ambitions.
With plans to invest $150 billion in natural-gas stakes around the world, the Saudi leadership was looking to sideline Iran and its vast reserves.
In turn, the young prince was floating partial privatization of Saudi Aramco, nearly four decades after his predecessors had bought out Standard Oil, and presented himself as a friend to Israel who could act as an enforcer against the Palestinians. The Trump administration, with Jared Kushner in the lead, was convinced that an investment in the young prince would pay off for the coming century.
Even as Total began breaking ground in southern Iran, Trump was setting the stage for an economic coup.
In May 2018, the United States announced its abandonment of the nuclear pact. One year later, all previous sanctions had snapped back, including the most fatal: the blacklisting of the Iranian petroleum sector.
Unable to secure a waiver from US sanctions, Total pulled out of Iran in August 2018, having spent only $40 million of a promised multibillion-dollar deal.
Two months later, Total inked a $9 billion contract with Aramco to build a petrochemicals plant in Saudi Arabia. The same week, reports emerged that Saudi columnist Jamal Khashoggi had been murdered inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.
As global outrage mounted over the killing, Total chief executive officer Patrick Pouyanné was boarding a plane for Riyadh to headline the Saudi crown prince’s “Davos in the Desert” investment conference.
“Total has never been in favor of sanctions and isolation,” he was quoted by the Financial Times as saying. For a company among many whose first choice was Iran, the statement can be taken with a heavy dose of irony.
James Dorsey, a senior fellow at Singapore’s Rajraratnam School and Middle East Institute, argues that the worst-case scenario for Saudi Arabia is an Iranian regime acceptable to the West and unfettered by sanctions.
Enforce a level playing field? “Iran wins this hands down,” he says.
That is the deal Trump has broken.
First published by Asia Times. Cartoon in The Spectator.
Alison T Meuse is the Asia Times Middle East editor and correspondent.
The Trump administration is doing to the regime in Tehran what the regime in Tehran has done to the majority of Iranians, in the past four decades. Nowadays, with Trump in the White House, average Iranians could not be happier.
" in July 2015, it was not simply a nuclear non-proliferation treaty – it was the invitation for Iran to retake its rightful seat at the table of nations."
Criminal mullahs and rightful seat ? ....
Are you kidding me ?
These are bunch of barbaric rag heads who are imposing mediaval sharia law on Iranian people for last 4 decades. Which right seat are you talkikng about ? They lash people like animals in public. Is that rightful seat among international community, or They rape virigin girls in prisons the night before their executions to make sure they go to hell after death. ...
Obama was sympathetic toward criminal mullahs because mullahs let the black hostages free during hostage crisis in Iran in 1979, so he was trying to help mullahs stay in power to defend blacks in America against white counterparts. But America policy makers are NOT and have not been black people. Founders of modern world were people such as George Washington.. Thosmas Jeferson... etc they were all white.
This is the problem with westerners. They have NO clue about Iran's history or rather they have NO clue of Mulllahs' mentality, Then they try to analyze Iran's politic. The only suggestion I can make it here is Alison T. Meuse, the writer of avove literature, read the book called : Tortured confession by Ervand Abrahamien. At least to read one book about Iran before writing any nonsens.
Thanks,
Siavash
I almost forgot to say that aside from the fact criminal mullahs let the black hostages free and kept the whtie ones, they took side with black folks in South Africa against white counterpart during Apartheid regime. Nelson Mandela became close friend with Rafsanjani. Mullahs traveled South Africa after Mandela took the office. Mandela also made a trip to Iran visiting ruling criminal mullahs. That was the only reason Obama was trying to help criminal mullahs stay in power and made that 2015 deal or gave them cash money. He wanted to promote black Americans' "social status" versus white countrerpart. Don't forget white folks are running America, NOT blacks.
Here is example to understand why Obama signed the 2015 deal. Ali khaminie AKA Ali Geda (Ali beggar) speaks highly of Malcolm X.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcSVtRePDqM
We touched ground on an international runway
Jet propelled back home, from over the seas to the U. S. A.
Detroit, Chicago, Chattanooga, Baton Rouge
Let alone just to be at my home back in ol' St. Lou
From the coast of California to the shores of Delaware Bay
You can bet your life I did, till I got back to the U. S. A.
Where hamburgers sizzle on an open grill night and day
Yeah, and a juke-box jumping with records like in the U.S.A.
Yes. I'm so glad I'm livin' in the U.S.A.
Anything you want, we got right here in the U.S.A.
Here’s what I wrote when this same piece was posted one day ago
Dear Ali,
I don’t know you. I tried to find out a little bit about you, but I couldn’t. Here are my thoughts:
You are a beautiful woman with a natural look and rustic fashion that many men, including myself, like. So, I hope, if you are not married, you’ll find a rich husband soon. And if you are married, I hope your husband will buy a lottery ticket and hit the largest jackpot in the American history, so you will stop working and start enjoying your life.
You see, my dear. As soon as I saw Kissinger’s name I knew what was going to follow. But to make sure I’m not mistaken I decided to read the paragraph that came after a large ad that followed the one with Kissenger’s name. You did not disappoint. 1953, again.
So, dear Ali, while looking for a rich husband or, if you are married, while waiting for your husband to win the jackpot, please stop writing about a history you know very little about and find some other hobby. Looking for a modeling job would be a great idea.