The lifting of the embargo on Iran

The sanctions imposed on Iran were lifted after it was announced that Iran had fulfilled the requirements of the nuclear agreement reached between the five permanent members of the UN and Germany, and Iran. This is a very important development for Iran and for international politics. For because of the sanctions imposed on it, Iran had adopted an uncompromising political stance in crisis areas and had become a country inclined to marginalisation both in domestic and in foreign policy. This created gaps that were hard to fill in resolving regional crises.

Turkey, which advocates the development of regional cooperation and the need for multiple mechanisms to come into play in resolving crises, said from the outset that Iran should not be marginalised by being pushed outside the system. In this respect it can even be said that it was Turkey that laid the milestones of the nuclear agreement reached between Iran and the Western countries.

At a time when the Western countries held an uncompromising attitude over Iran's nuclear programme, Turkey, together with Brazil, had brokered a nuclear agreement. Although this agreement was never put into practice, it enabled Iran to keep its diplomatic channels with the Western countries open, and in the end, albeit somewhat late, an agreement did come about.

In December 2015 the International Atomic Energy Agency completed the international investigation that had been under way in Iran for about 12 years, and announced that it had determined that, between 2003 and 2009, Iran had made efforts, even if of low intensity, towards acquiring nuclear weapons; but that from 2009 onwards no initiative or evidence that could raise suspicion of any such effort had been found. With the Agency's completion of the investigation, the way was also opened for the lifting of the sanctions.

In the end the embargoes imposed on Iran will be lifted. It is expected that Iran's integration into the system in this way, by developing its commercial relations both regionally and globally, may both prevent Iran's marginalisation and open the way for it to pursue a more responsible foreign policy. There are even views that the destructive and sectarian policies Iran has pursued in Syria and Iraq are, to some extent, related to its being flung out of the system and marginalised by the economic difficulties it was experiencing. According to this view, the embargoes had dragged the Iranian economy into a serious bottleneck.

In this framework, oil, Iran's most important source of income, had begun to be exported under the sanctions not for money but by barter. Let us state that Russia and China are among the countries that benefited most from the embargoes on Iran in this context. For these countries had become quite accustomed to trading oil for goods with Iran. For example, China for a time made its payments to Iran in items such as toys and prosthetic legs.

With the release of around one hundred billion dollars of Iran's assets held in international banks under blockage, we can say that the country may gain some economic relief; however, we are obliged to underline that, for it to gain relief politically as well, it must act in accordance with the spirit of the agreement. The agreement was an action aimed in one way or another at integrating Iran with the international community. With the lifting of the embargo, the appropriate ground for this to happen has been created. Which of the two lines will prevail in its relations with the international community and the region from now on, the inward-looking, sectarian line or the outward-looking line that rejects sectarianism, will also determine Iran's future.

The truth is that, to the extent that Iran has made progress in the nuclear negotiations with the 5+1, it has also continued to increase its sectarian policies, and the dose of violence in those policies, disproportionately. The success it achieved in the nuclear crisis, in return for the crisis it has escalated in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, either with its own forces or through the elements it supports, will be perceived as a kind of reward for this imperial policy.

None of Iran's practices through militias, in all these crisis regions and through its presence there, falls in any way behind Daesh terrorism. The savage deaths it has caused have now become uninterrupted. Despite this, the fact that the US, or the 5+1 in general, did not touch on these matters at all in their negotiations with Iran and focused only on issues concerning the nuclear programme shows that none of these countries has, at root, any problem with humanitarian issues, or even with terror.

Of course, it would be an exaggeration to say that this agreement will proceed depending only on Iran's policies. Here, the rivalry and disagreements between Israel and Iran will also have to be managed. It can be said that the only power that can manage this crisis-prone process is the US, but does it really have such power?

It is very hard to say that the Obama administration's current policy of "muddling through", that is, in colloquial terms, the "neither let the skewer burn nor the kebab" approach, can succeed in managing this process. The truth is that the Obama administration appears to have fully satisfied neither Israel's concerns, nor the concerns of the other countries that signed the agreement, nor American public opinion. The effort to camouflage the terror arising from Iran's sectarian policies by bringing Daesh terror so much to the fore is also a result of this situation; that is, American public opinion is being prepared for the image that Iran is a "cat that spilled the milk" next to Daesh. We will see whether the calculation in the White House will fit with Tehran.