{"id":69760,"date":"2016-02-15T12:06:57","date_gmt":"2016-02-15T12:06:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=69760"},"modified":"2016-02-15T12:06:57","modified_gmt":"2016-02-15T12:06:57","slug":"notes-from-tehran-trump-the-iranian-elections-and-the-end-of-sanctions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/02\/notes-from-tehran-trump-the-iranian-elections-and-the-end-of-sanctions\/","title":{"rendered":"Notes from Tehran: Trump, the Iranian Elections and the End of Sanctions"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Frnklin<\/a>13 Feb 2016 – <\/em>The remaining 5 or 7 Republican candidates, winnowed in from the original dozen, push to ingratiate themselves among South Carolina\u2019s Republican voters, who like a majority of their countrymen, are angry at Washington \u2018pay-to-play\u2019 politicians. The day before that state\u2019s\u00a0 February 27 primary, Iranian voters will have gone to the polls for their own crucial elections.<\/p>\n

Iranians will vote in twin elections for the Iranian parliament and to elect a more powerful separate body known as the Assembly of Experts.\u00a0 And yes, The Donald is now a factor in both of those Iranian elections.\u00a0 Before Trump involved himself, the Iranian elections had already proven divisive. Many relatively moderate\u00a0candidates were rejected by hard-liners during the vetting phase. Several of these blocked candidates support President Hassan Rouhani, a key architect of the Iran nuclear deal that they support.<\/p>\n

For his part, Rouhani has been traveling abroad to begin Iran\u2019s process of returning to international global trade. His recent travels are viewed among many in Iran as part of this month\u2019s elections to shore up his support, given that the election is partly a referendum on his record and the nuclear agreement.<\/p>\n

Hardliners in Iran and the US have joined the election campaign on the nuclear issue. Trump has referred to all supporters of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreements on Iran\u2019s nuclear program as \u201cstupid.\u201d \u00a0During recent campaign interviews his approach, which is a m\u00e9lange of nativism, conservatism, and populism is being closely monitored in Tehran while at home no other current candidate is matching its breadth.<\/a> The Donald insists that the Obama administration completely botched the negotiation with Iran, whereas being the master dealmaker; he would have negotiated the agreement with Iran and obtained a much better outcome for America.<\/p>\n

Trump assures voters that he would have spared America from having to pay to Iran what he wrongly claims are $150 billion.\u00a0 He would have easily done this by telling the Iranians:<\/p>\n

\u201cLook guys, we Americans owe $19 trillion in debt.\u00a0 We\u2019re a country that has no money.\u00a0 We can\u2019t give you the $150 billion dollars.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0 The Iranians, claims Trump, would have said, \u201cBut we want it. It\u2019s ours!\u201d\u00a0<\/em> And Trump says he would have responded, \u201cWe can\u2019t give it!\u00a0 We don\u2019t have it!\u00a0 We don\u2019t have it!\u201d<\/em> Trump assures audiences that he would have stood his ground and absolutely refused to pay the $150 billion.\u00a0 At that point, the meeting would have broken-up with no agreement.\u00a0 But then, two days later, the Iranians would have folded by calling Trump and saying, \u201cLet\u2019s make a deal.<\/em>\u201d Iran would then have agreed that America would not be required to pay the $150 billion.<\/p>\n

What has many Iranians scratching their heads and asking American visitors: \u201cWho is this is guy?\u201d is partially the fact that Trump seems not even to know that frozen Iranian funds were never part of the US budget and no one has ever seriously claimed that they don\u2019t belong to Iran. The US is obliged under the JCPOA<\/em> to simply return Iran\u2019s own money that it had seized and was holding in frozen accounts pending the resolution of the sanctions against Iran.<\/p>\n

During an interview last week with CNN, Trump, ignorant about the facts of the deal, obviously had no clue that this money always belonged to Iran. \u00a0 Yet this troubling fact does not prevent Trump from lambasting the nuclear deal and pledging to tear it up just as soon as he becomes president. He appears to have no idea what he is talking about in substance and appears to read from AIPAC \u2018fact sheets\u2019 which repeat Israel\u2019s PM Netanyahu\u2019s hysterical claims that Iran will be awash with up to $250 billion cash to fund more terrorism.<\/p>\n

Of course, neither Trump nor any US President is going to scrap the JCPOA and if one tried, America\u2019s global allies and likely the American public would strongly oppose its attempt. Nor will the Iranians scrape it.<\/p>\n

Iranians, unlike candidate Trump, are realistic about what sanctions relief will really mean to Iran, recognizing that $20 billion of their returning money is committed to projects with China where sanction relief funds cannot be spent, and that there are tens of billions of dollars locked up in nonperforming loans to Iran\u2019s energy and banking sectors. Iran has the world\u2019s fourth-largest proved reserves of crude oil, and hopes to quickly increase production, which could lead to tens of billions worth of new oil trade despite a slumping market. But that won\u2019t happen anytime soon.<\/p>\n

In the run-up to their elections, many Iranians are increasingly critical of the terms of the deal and Rohani is losing some support for not delivering on promises of JCPOA benefits. This month\u2019s elections will likely be viewed through this prism.<\/p>\n

Recent polls of public opinion in Iran show that there has been an approximately ten percent drop in public support for the agreement. A recent poll taken by the University of Maryland\u2019s Center for International and Security Studies last month shows that still nearly 72 percent of Iranians support last July\u2019s agreement. Last August the figure was 75%.\u00a0 Answering a question on whether the deal was a victory for Iran or a defeat, last August 36.6 percent of Iranians said it was a victory, but as of this month the figure has dropped to 27.4 percent. The current trend in Iranian public opinion has shifted with a rising number, currently 54%, up from 43% six months ago, claiming that the deal is beneficial for both Iran and the international community that agreed to it.<\/p>\n

So-called moderate supporters of Iran\u2019s President Rohani may have a major impact on this month\u2019s elections and bring changes to Iran. The Iranian public is sophisticated about what JCPOA is likely to mean for them. Recent polls show that there has been an approximately ten percent drop in public support for the agreement.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s claims that the Obama administration has given Iran a major financial windfall favoring Islamic extremism are not supported by any serious analysis.\u00a0 The Obama administration and its partners on the nuclear deal point out that Iran will receive over the next few years not $150 billion, but more like $56 billion, $32 billion of which it has already received, leaving $20 billion to repair its oil industry, much needed and popularly demanded infrastructure repairs plus measures to try to quell inflation.<\/p>\n

The World Bank also estimates that about $100 billion of Iranian assets were frozen abroad, around half of which Tehran could access to as a result of sanctions relief. A contest for available funds in already well underway in Iran between public expectations for use of the money and hardliners favoring the funds going to various military demands including from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its hardliner allies.<\/p>\n

Iranians will be indirectly voting this month on this key issue and students interviewed appear realistic that in the short term their lives will not be much improved as a result of JCPOA, but they overwhelmingly favor a return to \u2018normal\u2019 relations with the global community while acknowledging that <\/em>Iran and the West have conflicting opinions on such issues as human rights, religious governments, aspects of Islam, terrorism and Israel among others and\u00a0 that these differences will likely remain for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n

Some Iranians, especially young people, are also vocal about the fact that while Iran\u2019s 1979 Revolution shook its criminal justice system to the core, the country\u2019s legal framework remains largely inadequate, inefficient and inconsistent with fair trial standards, as claimed recently by Amnesty International.<\/p>\n

Changes are coming to Iran and America and this month\u2019s elections will likely point in which direction. This year\u2019s elections in America and Iran may well also have a major effect on which direction both countries move, as well as their impact on the Middle East-West Asia region.<\/p>\n

_____________________________<\/p>\n

Franklin Lamb<\/em>\u00a0is a visiting Professor of International Law at the Faculty of Law, Damascus University and volunteers with the Sabra-Shatila Scholarship Program (<\/em>sssp-lb.com<\/em><\/a>).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Iranians will vote in twin elections for the Iranian parliament and to elect a more powerful separate body known as the Assembly of Experts. And yes, The Donald is now a factor in both of those Iranian elections. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-focus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69760\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}