In his first official remarks directed at the governments in favor of imposing pressure on Iran, Iranian President Hassan Rohani added new keywords to his diplomatic terminology, which, if properly scrutinized, can help disambiguate his approach to Iran’s standoff with the West over the country’s nuclear program.

 

During his inauguration ceremony in the Iranian parliament, Rohani said that the only way to resolve Iran’s nuclear dispute is for Western governments to use the language of respect rather than the language of sanctions. 

 

The Westerners now have the expression “language of respect” along with Rohani’s other watchwords to decipher his discourse on foreign policy. Before this, Rohani was known to political circles inside and outside Iran for his frequent use of the term “moderation” and thus many Westerners thought he would be the one who would change the country’s diplomatic tone in order to break the deadlock with the West. 

 

However, Rohani elaborated on his key concepts of foreign policy when he called on major Western governments to stop disrespecting Iran through the imposition of sanctions. He urged them to show respect for Iran as a rising regional power and to start interacting with the country instead of using domineering rhetoric. This will certainly frustrate those in the West who thought Rohani would accept their illogical demand for a full halt to Iran’s uranium enrichment program.   

 

The language of sanctions, which the U.S. administration and Congress are using to try to persuade Iran to halt the fuel production segment of its peaceful nuclear program, is impeding the efforts to resolve the issue and complicating matters.

 

The imposition of sanctions on Iran by the U.S., which started a few years after the Islamic Revolution of 1979, is a general policy meant to contain Iran politically and economically and has absolutely nothing to do with the nuclear issue. Washington is aware of Iran’s progress in various scientific and technological fields and is deeply concerned about the country’s growing influence in the region and the entire Islamic world.

 

In other words, instead of interacting with Iran and appreciating it for the stabilizing role it plays in the Middle East and the Muslim world, as President Rohani suggested in his inauguration speech, Washington continues to expand the scope of the sanctions on Iran’s oil, financial, and trade sectors without heeding the warnings that such a policy will have serious repercussions on a global level. 

 

According to many political analysts, the West’s refusal to recognize Iran’s position and respect its sovereignty could lead to a major war. Rohani’s message to the Westerners is based on his perceptions. And as an experienced politician and diplomat, he is acutely aware of the potential consequences of the West’s reckless policy. 

 

The unilateralism of the U.S. and its unwillingness to join the international diplomatic process has a long history. Before Iran’s revolution of 1979, Washington’s massive support for the regime of the last shah of Iran was always criticized by many other governments, and many saw it as a serious threat to regional and international security. In his memoirs from the mid 1970s, Asadollah Alam, the then minister of the imperial court of Iran, recounts that in his final years in power, the shah was in constant friction with the Soviet Union over his blind subservience to U.S. policies. Alam noted that the shah was not warmly welcomed during his visit to Moscow in 1974, in which then Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev clearly warned the shah that Iran’s illogical and obstinate policies would sooner or later lead to another world war. Brezhnev, who was the general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, repeated his concerns a few days later, when he met then U.S. president Gerald Ford and secretary of state Henry Kissinger in Vladivostok, and again criticized Washington for selling a massive amount of advanced military equipment and weapons to Iran. 

 

The same can be said of Washington’s current policies toward the Middle East, which seem to have been adopted in order to start a world war. Nowadays the U.S. is imposing pressure on Iran and trying to prevent it from making progress, while at the same continuing to disproportionately support Israel, which is the main regional center for the promotion of extremism and hatred.

 

Israel and the puppet regime of the last shah of Iran were quite similar, especially in their subservience to the United States. However, modern Iran, with its revolutionary spirit, is totally different than Iran before 1979, because the people and the government will never again allow themselves to become tools for the implementation of U.S. policy in the region.

 

These are the reasons behind Rohani’s clear message to the United States, in which he said that if it wants to set aside differences with Iran, it must recognize and respect Iran as a regional power and start to speak with the country using the language of respect, not the language of sanctions.  

 

MS/HG