Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Tuesday boasted that the international sanctions regime against Iran was unraveling, echoing a theme that he has been consistently emphasizing since the interim Joint Plan of Action (JPA) – which provided Tehran with badly-needed financial relief – was signed in November:
“With your support, this government has taken the first steps toward the lifting of the brutal sanctions,” Rouhani said, according to The Jerusalem Post. “We will witness the sanctions shattering in the coming months.”
Rouhani continued: “We already see the sanctions unraveling.”
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif had as recently as late February bragged that Iran was “open for business,” a gesture toward explicit Obama administration statements – made by among others Treasury Department Under Secretary David Cohen, State Department Under Secretary Wendy Sherman, and various anonymous administration officials – insisting that the Islamic republic was “not open for business.”
Reuters noted at the bottom of its article on Rouhani’s speech that “Iran exported oil at levels higher than allowed under the sanctions for a fourth straight month in February,” noting that Washington lawmakers may decide a crackdown is in order if “economic pressure is being relaxed too quickly.” Figures from recent days indicate that Iran successfully extended its sanctions-busting streak into a fifth straight month in March.
The degree to which Rouhani genuinely believes that sanctions are crumbling is unclear. International reintegration and economic improvement were critical campaign themes for the revolutionary-era cleric, and some theories hold that he has been touting the collapse of sanctions as the fulfillment of campaign pledges. Skeptics have pointed out that overpromising sanctions relief to Iranian audiences dramatically increases the leverage that Western diplomats have in facing down Iranian negotiators: A halt or reversal in the relief would subsequently take place within a domestic environment of heightened expectations. It is not certain that Rouhani would have the will or political ability to raise the stakes for the Iranians in ongoing nuclear talks.
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