What do US sanctions on Iran make whom do?

With the USA's announcement of the sanctions it will impose on Iran, a new phase has been entered in the Iran issue (or more precisely, in the USA's dance with Iran).

In fact, the Obama administration had brought this country's nuclear program under control to a degree through an agreement signed with Iran, and in return a partial easing of the embargoes imposed on the country had been achieved.

Throughout his presidential campaign, President Trump spoke of the wrongness of the agreement signed with Iran and said that, if elected, he would repeal it. The most important supporter of Trump's fervent policy was Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. Netanyahu, who had reacted harshly to the Obama administration's signing of the agreement, continued after Trump's election as well his efforts to create public opinion in favor of the USA repealing the agreement signed with Iran. Since the Trump administration was already willing on this matter, the process moved quickly and has arrived at today.

The decisions taken by the US administration are not welcomed, particularly by European leaders. Since Iran's tendencies toward marginalization, Iran being on Europe's periphery, are felt first of all in Europe, European leaders argue that Iran must be engaged in global politics in a healthy way.

On the other hand, while the embargo decisions on Iran create fragility, in terms of moral motivation, in the reformist wing in Iran that is seeking to engage with the Western world, they butter the bread of those who want to turn the country into a kind of war machine completely isolated from the outside world.

It is possible to observe this situation at the level of Iran's ruling elites. In this framework, giving examples could also be illuminating for a healthier understanding of the matter.

Javad Zarif, who has been Iran's Foreign Minister for 5 years, is a good diplomat. A graduate of the University of Colorado, Zarif is an important face of the reformists, but his power appears to have diminished dramatically in the last 2 years.

Despite Zarif's diminishing power, there is someone whose power is growing: Ali Akbar Velayati, who advises Iran's religious leader Ali Khamenei on foreign policy. The West's challenge to Iran, especially the anti-Iran decisions taken by the Trump administration, has strengthened Velayati and pushed to the background the opening-up and pragmatist approach in Iran's foreign policy that has become concrete in the person of Javad Zarif.

Velayati is in fact someone who studied pharmacy in the USA at Johns Hopkins University in the 1960s. But unlike Zarif, he never embraced the American way of life. When the Shah was overthrown in 1981, he immediately joined the government. Between 1981 and 1997 he served as Iran's Foreign Minister.

When the reformists won the elections under Khatami in 1997, Velayati was appointed by Khamenei as a personal adviser. In 2013 he became the conservatives' candidate in the presidential elections.

Velayati likened the nuclear agreement known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, to the agreements signed in the 19th century that caused Iran's withdrawal from Dagestan and Azerbaijan. According to Velayati, another shortcoming of the agreement is that it has no Persian version. Just as with the Golestan and Turkmenchay agreements. In both agreements Iran was humiliated, according to Velayati. Therefore Iran needed to withdraw from the nuclear agreement.

When this level of discourse that Velayati builds on anti-Westernism combines with Trump's decisions, what emerges appears to be a picture that will increase marginalization tendencies in the country.

According to a study conducted by the University of Maryland, Iranians' support for Javad Zarif fell from 78% to 43% between 2016 and 2017. On the other hand, support for Qasem Soleimani and the Quds Force has risen to 61%.

What is striking here is that Velayati builds his discourse not as anti-American but as anti-interference. He says: "We should not be more open to Paris's influence than to Moscow's influence."

It can also be said that here an independence-minded, third-worldist discourse that fuses Iranians' national and religious feelings, and that is being likened to the approach of Mosaddegh, who is remembered as a national hero in Iranian history, is prominent.

The projections and policies of the Trump administration toward the region, which follows policies that make and legitimize this level of discourse possible, often do not produce linear results, you see.

Sanctions policies on Iran have become a typical example of this. In the end, whom the discourse, decision or policy of sanctions on Iran makes do what is as clear as day.

If this policy is being pursued knowing and taking into account these ultimate "sanctions," then it is worth taking off one's hat and reconsidering who is in what kind of alliance with whom.

And if not...

Let the USA think about that too.