The Iranian leadership has become entangled in a “vicious circle” that has cut them off from their own people and the international community, the US special envoy said, adding Washington was more focused on Tehran’s decision to arm Russia in Ukraine , and Iran’s suppression of its internal protests as on talks to revive the nuclear deal.
“The more Iran oppresses, the more sanctions there will be; The more sanctions there are, the more isolated Iran feels,” said Rob Malley, the US special envoy to Iran, at a conference in Rome.
“The more isolated they feel, the more they turn to Russia; The more they turn to Russia, the more sanctions there will be, the more the climate worsens, the less likely there will be nuclear diplomacy. So it is true that the vicious circles are all self-reinforcing at the moment.
“Suppression of the protests and Iran’s support for Russia’s war in Ukraine is our focus because that’s where things happen and that’s where we want to make a difference,” Malley added.
US Intelligence Director Avril Haynes said over the weekend there were worrying indications that Russia was looking to deepen military cooperation with Iran. Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri was in Moscow over the weekend.
A senior European diplomat said Iran is paying a huge price for its decision to become the only country to arm Russia in the war against Ukraine. “It is an unholy alliance and a massive miscalculation by Iran,” the diplomat said.
The Iranian regime says protests have dwindled over the past week as its crackdown has intensified, but it has called for protesters to take to the streets on December 14.
Iran’s Attorney General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri said Saturday that the government is reviewing the law on compulsory hijab, one of the issues that sparked the protests, which have been going on for more than 10 weeks. Montazeri also said the “morality police” responsible for enforcing the dress code had been “closed down,” but he gave no details.
The next show of US solidarity with the protesters is likely to come when they table a motion to kick Iran out of the UN Committee on the Status of Women in a vote on Dec. 14, Malley said.
The move follows a vote by the UN Human Rights Council on a motion tabled by Germany and Iceland to set up a committee of inquiry to investigate the protests, which Iran has said it will boycott. Iranian human rights activist Narges Mohammadi wrote to the UN asking the organization to investigate sexual harassment of women in prisons.
Iran’s Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi has set up an internal commission of inquiry, but he said on Sunday political parties and student representatives would not sit on it.
Some senior European diplomats believe an irreversible tipping point has been reached from which the Iranian leadership will not recover. The diplomat said: “The situation is actually quite simple. The Islamic Republic – the regime – has finally lost touch with its people after 43 years and that is what this is really about. This is unlike anything that has happened in the past 43 years.
“They are in dialogue with themselves, but the majority of the population sees the reform proposals as largely irrelevant.”
The diplomat also noted tensions within the regime over how to respond to the protests, saying: “There is a lot of internal disharmony around different parts of the respective security apparatus in terms of handing over responsibility for handling the protests.”
The diplomats believe the regime’s apparent loss of internal support is fueling internal Iranian debate over whether to reduce its isolation through a growing alliance with Russia or instead seek to revive the nuclear deal.
Malley’s comments suggest that the US believes Iran has made a series of fateful decisions that will allow a full revival of the nuclear deal, under which the West lifted some economic sanctions in exchange for control of Iran’s nuclear program, which is politically impossible for now , although he said the door to diplomacy was not closed when the Iranian leadership changed course.
The deal’s revival was about to be sealed in August when, according to the United States, Iran added new demands to the deal calling for the UN nuclear regulatory agency to stop an investigation into Iran’s past nuclear activities at three sites. The UN inspectorate has said Iran’s explanations for the presence of the nuclear particles are not credible. Iran said the investigation into its past activities was inspired by Israel.
With UN inspectors being given very limited access to Iran’s nuclear program and its increasing use of more advanced centrifuges, Western nuclear negotiators accept that Iran may be weeks away from producing enough enriched uranium to build a nuclear bomb. But Haynes said the US had no information that Iran was trying to arm the uranium stockpile.