As the row over Iran’s controversial nuclear program continues, and ten months and eight rounds of Iran talks in Vienna have rendered next to nothing, recent remarks made by Iranian regime Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei have infused more contradictions into this already complex predicament. The current stalemate is driving rifts into Khamenei’s own faction. Some voices are welcoming direct negotiations with the U.S., while others are dismissing such a shift in tone as “treason.”
This internal standoff, which demonstrates the weak and desperate state of Tehran’s regime, which has thus far gone unnoticed in mainstream media, provides an opportunity for the West. In contrast to the appeasement policy currently being pursued, the U.S. and European governments should realize the calamities facing Iran’s regime and raise their demands. Not only should the regime’s nuclear program be constrained, but significant measures need to be taken to end their dangerous missile and drone programs and to end Tehran’s malign influence across the Middle East.
Khamenei, who has generally been quiet on the nuclear dossier, broke his silence on January 9th during a speech in Qom. His remarks, however, only added to the shadow of contradictions already cast on the nuclear talks and the future of the regime’s ambitions. He used words and phrases like “engagement” and “negotiations … with the enemy” alongside “one should not surrender.”
The deadlock before Khamenei over direct negotiations with the U.S. is crystal clear in the back-and-forth seen between the regime’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian and Supreme National Security Council Secretary Ali Shamkhani on the one hand, and Hossein Shariatmadari, editor-in-chief of Kayhan daily, an outlet known as Khamenei’s mouthpiece, on the other.
On January 24, Amir Abdollahian showed a green light to direct negotiations with the U.S. He said: “If direct negotiations with the U.S. become necessary, we will not avoid them.”
The next day, Shamkhani voiced the possibility of entering into direct negotiations with the U.S. if “a good agreement is at hand.”
But Shariatmadari immediately responded on the same day, strongly criticizing both Abdollahian and Shamkhani. With former regime president Hassan Rouhani and the so-called “moderate” faction sidelined by Khamenei, all three aforementioned officials are figureheads in Khamenei’s own faction.
“Isn’t succumbing to direct negotiations with the U.S. the same as placing ourselves in the very trap that they have set for us?” Shariatmadari asked in a piece published in Kayhan on January 26. “A wide range of people who support [the regime] are extremely concerned” after hearing such remarks, Shariatmadari added, referring to regime insiders, members of the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), and the paramilitary Basij. “Revise your imprudent remarks and bring an end to all the confusion you have caused,” he warned.
Regime President Ebrahim Raisi made things even more confusing for regime officials when he said during an interview with state TV on January 25: “We are declaring here that if the other parties are ready to lift sanctions, there is certainly room for any type of agreement.”
At a high level, this clearly highlights Khamenei’s dilemma, who has the final say on all security and foreign policy matters in the mullahs’ regime. On the one hand, he cannot afford to maintain a rigid position of absolutely no talks with the U.S., a country that delivered a strategic blow to his regime just two years ago by eliminating former IRGC Quds Force terrorist mastermind Qassem Soleimani.
On the other hand, Khamenei knows that the status quo is not sustainable and that despite the U.S. administration’s expression of readiness for talks for the past year, there have been no meaningful changes to the sanctions regime even as the Iranian economy is tanking. This is exactly why we are witnessing an unprecedented divide and feuds among Khamenei’s inner circle and senior officials.
This is all the more reason for the West to seize this opportunity and demand meaningful restrictions and limitations on all of the regime’s malign behaviors. In a speech delivered on January 17, Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the Iranian opposition coalition National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), outlined the actions and demands that the international community should be placed before the mullahs’ regime:
“The international community must reinstate the six UN Security Council resolutions on the Iranian regime’s nuclear projects. It should bring the regime’s uranium enrichment to a complete halt and shut down the regime’s nuclear sites. Unconditional inspections are indispensable to prevent the regime’s access to an atomic bomb.
“Second, the brutal and systematic violation of human rights in Iran must be placed on the agenda of the UN Security Council.
The regime’s leaders must be brought to justice for four decades of crimes against humanity and genocide, especially the massacre of 30,000 political prisoners in 1988, and the killing of at least 1,500 protesters in 2019.
“Third, the international community must recognize the Iranian people’s struggle to overthrow the regime and to establish democracy and people’s sovereignty in their country. This is the Iranian people’s inalienable right.”
