Viewpoint

Negotiations Mean Fair Play and Not Blackmail

Date: 20 February 2022 - 21:52

News ID: ۱۰۰۲۲۸

By: Kayhan Int’l Staff Writer

The purpose of negotiations is to arrive at a common point that in no way harms the legal and lawful interests of the parties involved.
It is neither the imposing of an unfair deal on the opposite side nor is it advancement of the vested interests of exploitative and hegemonic powers.
In case a fair agreement is not reached then it is better to discontinue talks on the issue in order to take stock of the discussions for a future round of negotiations, rather than bow to blackmail in haste on the wrong assumption that the matter would be resolved.
This is the most harmful aspect of any negotiations and as pointed out recently by the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, is detrimental to national interests.
This means the ongoing talks in Vienna between Iran and the three major European powers of Germany, France, and Britain, in addition to Russia and China, on the Islamic Republic’s inalienable right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, which have reportedly entered the crucial phase, have still not reached the desired result because of US intransigence in continuing its economic terrorism.
In other words, the main hurdle for return to the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action (JCPOA) that the Islamic Republic of Iran had signed in Geneva in 2015 in good faith, but erred in giving more concession than required in the vain hope of ending the US blackmail policy of sanctions, and unwittingly granted veto power to its archenemy to approve the deal every three months, faces the same impediments this time as well.
The US has neither lifted the illegal sanctions it had imposed in 2018 after unlawfully withdrawing from the JCPOA nor is ready to give guarantees in writing that the new agreement will never by sabotaged by the current regime in Washington or the subsequent regimes that come to power every four years.
The ball is not in Tehran’s court anymore, and as long as the US and its European accomplices fail to end their policy of economic terrorism, it is unlikely that the Vienna negotiations will yield any result.
Of course, the moment these parties end their intransigence, Iran will definitely oblige, but this does not mean the Islamic Republic, which is the only country that has ruled manufacture of weapons of mass destruction as “haraam” (religiously forbidden) needs permission from the world’s dangerously nuclear-armed powers to develop its peaceful nuclear projects.
Moreover, Iran, which has taken major steps for delinking its economy to the JCPOA or any such agreement, will no longer bow to blackmail in the name of negotiations nor will it take any hasty step that is detrimental to national interests.
Hopefully reason will prevail in the negotiations at Vienna in the interests of all parties involved, but definitely not in promoting the vested interests of hegemonic powers.