Rules of the Game in the Post-JCPOA Era

By: Hanif Ghaffari

The JCPOA document was finally ratified by the National Security Council, the Parliament and the Guardian Council. While we should utilize the advantageous points of the document, we should also be vigilant against possible abuses of the document through its weaknesses. Officially entering the post-JCPOA era, our game in this critical period is bound by rules that, if ignored or even worse, rejected as unrealistic, will increase our vulnerability in political, economic, diplomatic and security areas. The opposite also holds true: our correct understanding of the post-JCPOA era and characteristics of our opponents will create opportunities and remove threats in our periphery. Here, we should pay close attention to the key word "enemy's infiltration" [highlighted by the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei in his speech on September 16, 2015]. Objective knowledge of this phenomenon is the key to our success in the post-JCPOA era. Thus, we need to examine the enemy's channels of infiltration and their mechanisms of playing the game.

One) in domestic politics, enemies of the Islamic Republic intend to polarize relations between 'revolutionary' forces of the country. This polarization aims to isolate the Supreme Leader and undermine the base of the Islamic Republic. It is not surprising that counter-revolutionary media have focused intensively on arguments during the process of examining the JCPOA in the parliament. The truth is that polarization is a structural formula for the enemy, not a temporary tactic. The only effective solution to counter this dangerous strategy and block the enemy's path towards infiltration is unity around the Supreme Leader and values of the Islamic Republic, and introducing a realistic distinction between friends and enemies of the Revolution. If we believe that a major part of the enemy's stratagem is designed not beyond our borders, but inside our domestic politics and through fostering infighting among loyalists to the Islamic Republic, then we will definitely opt for a smarter and more rational plan against this multi-layered and complicated operation.

Two) in the field of foreign policy, the enemy aims to 'deform' our regional and global strategies and replace them with new ones. Their first step is to show that Iran's tenets in foreign policy are negotiable. In other words, the United States and other enemies of the Islamic Republic will initially convert the principles of our foreign policy into flexible tactics, and after breaking the outer shell, design them in the way they want. Washington's game in this regard is quite complicated. They may even agree with keeping the outer appearance of Iran's diplomatic principles, but they aim to make its hard core malleable. They will monitor dialogue between their opponents and proponents inside the country in order to form a discourse that approves of disemboweling Iran's strategies.

Three) in the security field, Washington and its allies will run parallel strategies through various fronts to advance their infiltration. Firstly, Washington aims to simplify security equations of the Muslim World by denying its own role in intentionally creating an unsafe zone. Instead of showing its true face as the creator of the terrorism crisis in the region, the West will emerge as the solution to the region's security crises. In this equation, the West will never address neither its open nor its backstage support for the Zionist Regime, ISIS and some Arab states of the region such as Saudi Arabia which has led to increasing insecurity in the Muslim World; but it will represent a skewed portrayal of itself to the global public opinion. Western media will function as a catalyst in this equation to manufacture consent among the regional and global public opinion as quickly as possible. In such a situation, even direct support by the US for Israel, and Washington's, the UN's and the IAEA's silence against anti-security measures of Israel (such as its nuclear stockpile) will face a media boycott. Clearly, in such a situation, not only blocking the path of infiltration, but also reinforcing Iran's security capabilities, such as its domestic missile power, will help. This is the main reason for the West's distress with Iran's unveiling of its recent nuclear achievements: they will block infiltration in the post-JCPOA era.

Four) In the economic field, the US is trying to turn the JCPOA into the cornerstone of Iran's economy, in order to prevent it from flourishing based on its potential capacities in the fields of economy and industry. In other words, the West's economic infiltration works through establishing a JCPOA-reliant economy. As said many times, since the JCPOA is potentially exposed to violation by the West and even other members of the P5+1, it cannot be the cornerstone of Iran's economy. At this critical point, endogenous economy, or resistance economy, should be viewed as the only solution to counter the West's economic infiltration in Iran in the post-JCPOA era. The principle of mistrust in the other party and also economic principles necessitate that, instead of relying on a variable capacity, we rely on the country's domestic capacity that is independent from the enemy's behavior. If resistance economy turns into our model in the fiscal and trade areas, and the JCPOA falls under this category, then we can block the enemy's path, redefine our economy in a correct fashion and hold the upper hand in competition against the US. However, if the JCPOA and sanctions turn into the spirit of economy and dominate resistance economy, instead of being a proactive player in the economy, we will be limited to showing reactions. Foreign actors will replace domestic capacity in that situation.

In the post-JCPOA era, the anarchic nature of international relations will make the game complicated. Thus, the enemy has launched a massive campaign in various fields against Iran. We should do our utmost not to take a wrong step in building a powerful Iran in the post-JCPOA era.

This article was originally published in Resalat. Resalat, the elder of the conservative press, started publishing in 1987. Established by a number of conservative figures of the Islamic Republic, it was critical of the policies of the Left camp of the Islamic Republic and then-Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi. Later, it became a critic of the Reformist president Mohammad Khatami. Hanif Ghaffari is the newspaper's editor of the international desk.