Why Trump Proposes Unconditional Negotiation To Iran? – OpEd

The United States has planned five stages or steps for “standardizing Iran’s behavior” or in better words, implementing its “regime change” plan. They include: 1. mounting economic and livelihood pressure on Iranian society, 2. casting doubt on honesty of senior Iranian officials among people, 3. creating a people-government binary, 4. spreading despair and fear about future among people, and most importantly, 5. proposing unconditional negotiations with the Iranian government to incite people’s sentiments and make the Iranian society inclined toward new talks with the United States. Washington believes that the four first stages have been completed and accepting proposed direct talks with the US would amount to completion of the fifth phase. After that, standardization of Iran’s behavior and regime change plan will follow. These five steps, as defined by the United States, can be analyzed as follow

1. Intensification of sanctions: This has been a regular policy used by the United States to deal blows to the Islamic establishment and create dissatisfaction among Iranian people. This has been also the most unchanging US policy, which has been meant to alter the behavior of the Islamic Republic of Iran during the past four decades. Clear evidence to this issue included Washington’s insistence on using this tool following the conclusion of Iran’s nuclear deal, or the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in addition to passing and implementing of the law that prohibits entry into Iran for citizens from 38 countries, and the Iran Sanctions Act (ISA) under former U.S. president, Barack Obama. Other steps taken in this regard were implementation of the CAATSA sanctions act as well as imposition of 90- and 120-day sanctions on Iran under the incumbent US President Donald Trump in addition to scores of similar measures taken in parallel with the offer of new talks to the Iranian side.

2. Casting doubt on the honesty of senior Iranian officials among people and convincing them that decisions made by government are based on individual choices and not beneficial to all: In line with this policy, Americans have been leveling economic accusations against Iranian officials to cause people to doubt and be pessimistic about large-scale decisions of the government, both inside and outside the country. They have also pretended to be sympathetic toward Iranian people on many occasions: a) by Barack Obama at the United Nations, who lauded history of Iranian people and noted that chanting “death to America” would not create jobs, nor make Iran safer; b) by former US secretary of state, John Kerry, who said in remarks at the Council on Foreign Relations that Iranians were educated people and sanctions would not stop their progress; c) by Kerry’s successor, Mike Pompeo, who said the United States supported the forgotten voice of Iranian people; and d) by Donald Trump who told Iranian nation that they will see America’s support in due time. In the latest instance, Pompeo made remarks to a gathering of anti-Iran Mojahedeen Khalq Organization in which he tried to convince Iranians that the Islamic establishment did not care about their economic problems and leveled many charges against high-ranking Iranian officials without producing any proof.

3. The certain outcome of the aforesaid two propositions, if they are implemented accurately and succeed, would be “creating the binary of people-government.” This means that people would see their interests and priorities in conflict with priorities of officials and reach the conclusion that many senior officials do not consider people’s priorities as theirs and are busy with economic and financial corruption! Spreading false news and rumors by foreign Persian-speaking news outlets and some media affiliated with a special political current inside the country shows that they have made creating this binary their main goal.

4. Instilling despair and fear in people about the future: This would be an objective achievement of the people-government binary. When the society has experienced economic pressure resulting from sanctions and inefficiency of statesmen, and when its mind is faced with a great number of false accusations against the country’s officials, it will naturally see its interests to be at odds with those of the government in the general sense of the word. Therefore, it will lose hope in efficiency of the Islamic establishment due to inability of the government and parliament to solve problems and will have no motivation to deal with the enemy’s plots. Such a sense of self-degradation and disappointment about the future of the establishment could be the most lethal poison for any country.

5. Proposing unconditional negotiations with the Iranian government to incite people’s sentiments and increase tendency of Iranian society toward new negotiations: This is the fifth step for standardization of Iran’s behavior and implementing the regime change plan. This is why Donald Trump recently offered unconditional negotiations to the Iranian side. It is noteworthy that he did this at a time that his country has left the JCPOA without paying a price and is now trying to incite the public sentiments to mount pressure on the Iranian government and start a new round of negotiations on Iran’s missile program and regional influence. This means that the new US offer of talks without any conditions is just a new trap to incite the Iranian society to counter the Islamic establishment. In fact, Trump and the US government believe that now is a good time to incite Iranian society by offering unconditional negotiations. They believe that Iranian society is at its wit’s end due to the most difficult of economic conditions it is facing and, therefore, it blames the whole Islamic establishment for inefficiency of various officials and political groups, thus losing hope in the future of the establishment. Therefore, the society believes that negotiating with the United States is the sole way to get out of the current dire straits that the country is going through. This is why some voices inside the country, which welcome Trump’s proposal, are playing within the puzzle designed by Trump, assuming that they are not hand in glove with the enemy.