Iran Frolics With Europe As America Bickers

BUT for the effort of the United States, which almost personalised the war against nuclear proliferation, Tehran would by now have joined the league of nuclear powers. Consequently, when Iran began showing genuine efforts at yielding to international pressures, Washington, despite pockets of domestic misgivings and restlessness from key allies –– Israel and Saudi Arabia in particular, led the campaign to relax sanctions against the Shiite-dominated Iran. Incidentally though, the United States appears to be playing behind Europe in “Iran floodgate.” A role, which may become even more distant in comings days, if the divisive presidential campaign rhetoric, especially by Republican Party hopefuls, are any yardstick.

In a relationship which began to experience hiccups in 1954 when the United States orchestrated a coup ousting the democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq, to the 1979-81 US embassy in Tehran hostage crisis and the US shooting down Iranian passenger plane, killing all 290 on board going for pilgrimage, Iran and United States have been involved in a love-hate affairs.

In 2002, President George Bush denounced Iran as part of an axis of evil with Iraq and North Korea, in a State of the Union speech that caused outrage in Iran.

Emboldened by the speech, Iranian opposition groups disclosed that the country was developing nuclear facilities including a uranium enrichment plant at Natanz and a heavy water reactor at Arak.

Washington quickly alleged a clandestine nuclear weapons programme, which Iran denies, igniting a decade-long intermittent Iranian engagement with the United Nation’s nuclear watchdog and diplomatic activities. The UN ratified four rounds of sanctions on Iran between 2006 and 2010 over the nuclear issue.

The US and EU also imposed sanctions on Tehran, stepping up measures in 2012 to include the financial sector. Several other countries have bilateral sanctions. By 2013, the Iranian currency, according to the US Treasury claims, had lost two-thirds of its value.

Basking in the euphoria of his four-day official visit to Europe, which took him to Italy and France, President Hassan Rouhani said it was up to Washington to improve relations with Tehran. The United States, according to him, cannot solve any problems in the Middle East without Iran’s help and should therefore drop its “hostile” stance toward Tehran.

While EU firms are lining up to sign lucrative business deals, the United States is keeping some of its sanctions in place, accusing Tehran of funding what it considers to be terror groups, and ties between the two nations remain terse.

“It’s possible that Iran and the United States might have friendly relations. But the key to that is in Washington’s hands, not Tehran’s,” Rouhani told a news conference, saying he would be happy to see US businessmen in Iran.

“I would like to see the Americans set aside their hostility and chose another way, but inside the US there are some problems, there is no unified voice,” he said, noting that “the Zionist lobby” was “very influential.”

He also rejected accusations that Iran was funding terror organisations. “It is clear that Iran is a country opposed to terrorism and a country that fights terrorism,” he said.

According to a report, Iran Air has ordered 118 commercial passenger planes, including 12 Airbus A280s, the world’s largest jet airliner. The package is worth about 22bn euro.

In total, there are 73 wide-body and 45 single-aisle aircrafts on the list. Iran has signaled that it needs as many as 500 new planes, and other companies such as Boeing are considering whether to do business with the country.

Other Euro deals include, signing a contract, worth 5.7bn euro, with the Italian metal industry firm to supply heavy machinery and equipment to Iran, the Italian oil and gas contractor agreed a deal, 3.5 bn euro, to revamp and upgrade Pars Shiraz and Tabriz oil refineries.

French carmaker, Peugeot, made a deal, 400m euro, for a joint venture with the Iranian vehicle manufacturer, Khodro, to modernize a car factory near Tehran, where three new Peugeot models will be manufactured. The two companies worked together before sanctions, and the project will produce 100,000 vehicles a year starting in late 2017. Other deals include those involving the oil giant, Total, airport construction firm, Aéroports de Paris and Bouygues, and Italian construction concern, Vinci which will develop a new terminal at Shahid Hashemi Nejad airport in Mashhad, north-east Iran.

But for the Republican Party presidential hopeful, Donald Trump, the US-Iran nuclear deal is a bad one. According to him, “I think it’s made by people that are incompetent, and it might very well get by because probably the veto is, you know, it’s going to be –– he’s in pretty good shape in terms of that, but I think it’s a disgrace and we should have doubled up the sanctions and we should have made a deal with.

We were dealing from desperation. We look so desperate, and it’s a disgrace. I think the deal is absolutely something. I love the idea of a deal. But it’s not a well negotiated deal. We should have doubled up the sanctions and made a much better deal.”

Other presidential candidates are equally high on their anti-Iranian sentiments. Senator Ted Cruz vowed to rip up the Iranian nuclear accord if he’s elected president. “This deal will only accelerate Iran’s acquiring nuclear weapons. If I’m elected president, on the very first day in office, I will rip to shreds this catastrophic Iranian nuclear deal,” he said.

Former Arkansas State Governor Mike Huckabee also agreed with Cruz that the deal should be rescinded immediately. “This threatens Israel immediately,” he said. “They threaten the very essence of western civilization. To give them this agreement that the President (Obama) treats like the Magna Carta, but the Iranians treat it like it’s toilet paper. We must simply make it very clear that the next president, one of us on this stage, will absolutely not honor that agreement and will destroy it.”