Is Iran cornered?

VOLTAIRE NET – Even though they stand together against foreigners, the governors of Iran are extremely divided between the Supreme Leader (Ayatollah Ali Khameney), the President of the Republic (Cheikh Hassan Rohani), and the chief of the opposition (ex-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has been under house arrest for a year, and whose main collaborators were imprisoned after a series of secret trials).

At the end of Ahmadinejad’s second mandate, President Barack Obama attended secret negotiations in Oman with the Rafsandjani-Rohani team. The principle for the nuclear agreement was then approved. Cheikh Rohani was betting on his secret agreement with the US Democrats. He anticipated the cancellation of US sanctions, and promised a better life for his electors. Once he was elected, he dismantled the system that had enabled Iran to avoid the sanctions, then pretended to negotiate in Switzerland with the major powers the agreement which already been recorded with the USA alone.

However, the signature of the 5+1 agreement was not followed by the lifting of sanctions. Since the Iranian economy could no longer avoid them, it collapsed. When Donald Trump entered the White House, he scrapped the agreement with Iran, plunging the Rohani team into panic. Rohani had committed the error of believing that the President would quickly be removed and that the Democrats would shortly be back in power. Iran rejected Donald Trump’s offer of negotiation and is today economically strangled. CONTINUE READING