The day after the November 24 deadline for a comprehensive nuclear agreement between P5+1 and the Iranian regime was extended for seven months, the regime’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei delivered his first remarks on the negotiations, saying that the West had failed to bring his regime “to its knees.”
Addressing a group of clerics in Tehran, Khamenei, who has the final say on all important state matters, dismissed the diplomatic and economic pressure that forced his regime to make a slight political retreat by signing the interim agreement in Nov 2013, a basis for the negations that are still ongoing.
“In the nuclear issue, America and colonial European countries got together and did their best to bring the Islamic Republic to its knees, but they could not do so — and they will not be able to do so,” his personal website quoted him as saying.
Yet, on Thursday Khamenei expressed his support for the extension of the talks:
“I do not disagree with the extension of the negotiations, as I have not disagreed with negotiations in the first place,” Khamenei said in another speech published on his website.
Once again Khamenei attacked the United States, describing its policies as wavering and unclear.
“America is a chameleon, and everyday makes new statements,” he said in comments that were delivered to an audience of paramilitary Basij forces, according to his website.
Khamenei said he was not worried about whether the negotiations would lead to a deal. “If there is no agreement, we will not lose,” he said.
Khamenei’s remarks on Thursday apparently contradicted his remarks two days earlier.
Yet, these remarks manifests the true state of the strategic deadlock and quandary that the Iranian regime is facing on the nuclear issue.
On one hand, under pressure from international sanctions, international isolation, and the revelation of its nuclear weapons program by the National Council of Resistance of Iran, Khamenei was forced to retreat a step when he agreed to the Geneva accord. On the other hand, possessing a nuclear bomb is viewed as a guarantor of survival of the regime; a necessity that has only grown more important in light of the regime’s regional peril following the downfall of Nouri-al-Maliki, the regime’s protégé in Iraq.
Tehran’s intransigence and stonewalling in the talks persists despite one year of extensive negotiations and several unwarranted concessions by the US administration. That is a strong indicator that Khamenei considers the regime to be too feeble to give up on one of its pillars of survival.