The Iran nuclear deal is not going well. President Hassan Rouhani has got his government into a dangerous incoherence as Iran continues to interfere in the internal affairs of several Arab states and is an active participant in the fighting in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, while at the same time it is seeking entry into the international arena with the ending of sanctions, following the 2015 nuclear deal.
Iran faces a presidential election next year and the incumbent Rouhani will face an uphill battle to convince the people that his internationalist brand of Iran’s deeply conservative establishment deserves another chance. Rouhani won the necessary internal political backing by promising that Iran’s crippled economy would revive with a flood of international investments. This did not happen and therefore the nuclear deal is in danger of unravelling, if western banks continue to refuse to give Iran access to the global financial system.
Multinational banks have largely refused to deal with any payment coming in or out of Iran for fear of reprisals from the all-powerful United States banking authorities. When US Secretary of State John Kerry and his European counterparts sought a more active role from the banks, they were told by the bankers that when they listened to the US the last time, they were handed large fines with a change in US position. Iran has said that it views this attitude as breaking the nuclear deal, by making a nonsense of ending the sanctions. It is true that the banks are hampering trade, but if Rouhani genuinely wants good relations with the global community, he should start by stopping fomenting violence in the Arab region.
