“The seeds of the present conflict can be traced back to the withdrawal of the Americans from the JCPoA,” argues Saurabh Kumar, India’s former ambassador to Iran. “My own sense is that there can be no absolute solution to the nuclear issue.
“While the Americans and the Israelis would like the Iranians not to enrich uranium, the Iranian position is that the NPT, to which they are a signatory, gives them that right,” he told StratNews Global on The Gist.
In his view, the JCPoA had “struck a good compromise” between these two positions. But with the US having walked out of the JCPoA, leaving Iran with no limitations on either enrichment or IAEA inspections, the world is left with a very complex situation.
It’s true that not everybody was satisfied with the JCPoA. It did not cover Iran’s ballistic missile programme or its support for proxies. But JCPoA was basically an arms control agreement with the focus on Iran’s nuclear programme.
Ambassador Kumar underscored another point: “There’s been abundant material, analysis, evidence available with Western intelligence that since 2003, Iran has not been pursuing a programme focused on nuclear weapons.”
He also believes that Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme, its missile arsenal and its regional proxies have been degraded, but rejects the US claim of having achieved “regime change” in Tehran.
“I think the consensus is that there has been a change of leadership, but there has been no change in the governance structure in Iran. A nuclear file is still open and needs to be sorted out too. There has been no positive movement from the American point of view and the Israeli point of view on that.”
An argument can be made, he says, that Western objectives have been achieved to a limited degree but what they may not have bargained for was the Iranian closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
“This weapon which Iran has, I don’t think this genie can be put back in the bottle again.”
Tune in for more in this conversation with Saurabh Kumar, former ambassador to Iran.
