Introduction
Hello everyone and welcome to my channel. Recently, Trump has posted many tweets about Iran on Twitter. From various signs, it seems that the United States is likely to join Israel in taking military action against Iran. Whether to declare a full-scale war on Iran depends on the vote of Congress. The main reason for Israel and the United States to take military action against Iran is Iran's nuclear program.
The Iran Nuclear Deal in 2015
In 2015, the United States and Iran signed a nuclear agreement, which was regarded as President Obama's greatest diplomatic legacy. It successfully prevented the Middle East from falling into a new round of war. The Iran nuclear deal was considered an important achievement of multilateralism and international cooperation. It was reached through negotiations among the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (the United States, China, Russia, the United Kingdom, and France), plus Germany and the European Union. The agreement imposed strict restrictions on Iran's nuclear activities, including reducing the number of centrifuges, limiting the concentration of uranium enrichment, and accepting inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The agreement was also recognized by the United Nations Security Council and most of the international community, and was considered a milestone in maintaining the international nuclear non-proliferation system and regional stability.
The Origin of the Agreement
However, the real origin of this agreement was not in the luxurious hotels in Vienna or the negotiation tables in Geneva, but in the palaces of Oman, a hot and mysterious country on the Arabian Peninsula. Oman is a country that many people may not be familiar with, but for football fans, Oman's national football team is one of the few teams that the Chinese national football team could beat in the early years.
The Story of Qaboos bin Said al Said
Qaboos bin Said al Said was born in Salalah, the capital of Oman, in 1940. His father was the king of Oman. Qaboos had a very repressed childhood because his father, who was very conservative, did not allow him to play games, talk to others about things unrelated to learning, or go to the beach to meet girls. His father also implemented some very strange policies in Oman, such as banning the public from wearing sunglasses, playing football, and smoking in public. In 1956, when Qaboos was 18 years old, his father sent him to study at a private college in the United Kingdom for five years. During this period, he learned horse riding and developed a strong interest in classical music. In 1962, he graduated from the Royal Military Academy in the United Kingdom and became an officer in the British Army's Rifle Brigade. He served in West Germany for one year. Qaboos' experience of studying in the United Kingdom had a profound impact on him. After returning to Oman in 1964, his father could not tolerate his progressive ideas. He was软禁 in the palace for six years. In 1970, with the help of the British government, Qaboos led the loyal army officers and soldiers to launch a palace coup, 软禁 his father, overthrew his father's conservative regime, and renamed the country from the Sultanate of Muscat to the Sultanate of Oman. He then, with the assistance of the Iranian army and the Royal Air Force of the United Kingdom, defeated the Communist guerrillas from Yemen and successfully prevented Oman from becoming a member of the Communist family. His father was exiled to the United Kingdom and died two years later, probably due to anger. Qaboos never forgot the kindness of the Iranians. Therefore, even after the Islamic Revolution in 1979, when Tehran became the center of anti-monarchy and anti-Americanism, Qaboos was still one of the few Arab monarchs who could directly communicate with the Iranian revolutionary regime. His country is located at the throat of the Strait of Hormuz, only 150 miles from the Iranian coast. Any conflict would bring disaster to Oman. Therefore, acting as a bridge between Washington and Tehran is both his geopolitical strategy and his way of survival.
The Secret Channel between the United States and Iran
In 2009, when Obama first entered the White House, he promised to engage in dialogue with the enemies of the United States and resolve conflicts through peaceful means, which gave Oman a historic opportunity. However, a sudden incident became a touchstone to test the effectiveness of this secret channel. Three young graduates from the University of California, Berkeley, after graduating, went on a trip to Iraq. While hiking in the mountains, they accidentally crossed the unmarked border and were arrested by the Iranian border guards on charges of espionage. This incident occurred at a very delicate time. In June 2009, Iran had just held a presidential election, and the then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced his victory. However, the supporters of his reformist opponent accused the election of serious fraud, which led to large-scale street protests. This movement, which was called the Green Movement because the demonstrators generally used green as the representative color, was the largest-scale unrest in Iran since the Islamic Revolution in 1979 and was quickly suppressed by the government. Against this background, Tehran accused Washington of inciting internal unrest and trying to carry out a color revolution, which made the already hostile US-Iran relations even worse. Although the Obama government had repeatedly shown goodwill to Iran after taking office, including issuing a Persian New Year's greeting and being willing to resolve differences through diplomatic means on the basis of mutual respect, the mutual distrust between the two sides was already deeply rooted. In fact, while publicly seeking diplomatic contact, the United States' secret cyber-attack plan against Iran's nuclear facilities, codenamed "Olympic Games," was also ongoing. Iran insisted that the three people were spies, while the US government denied it. The three people were directly sent to Evin Prison, the most notorious prison in Tehran, facing the possibility of being imprisoned for several years. Evin Prison is no ordinary prison. Since its establishment, its main reputation has been as a place to hold political prisoners. It is a bit like the Zhazidong Prison during the Kuomintang period. Allegations of torture and abuse in the prison are common. The most famous case is that in 2003, Iranian-Canadian female journalist Zahra Kazemi was arrested for taking pictures outside the prison and later died of a head injury in prison. Although the official said at the time that she died of a stroke, it was widely claimed that she had been tortured and raped before her death. For many political prisoners and accused spies, Evin Prison is more like a detention and interrogation center. They may be detained for several years without a formal verdict, enduring great psychological pressure in the long wait. Some people eventually die. So this situation is very bad for these three young Americans.
The Role of Oman
At this time, Sultan Qaboos and his most trusted envoy, Salim bin Nasser al-Ismaili, came on the scene. Al-Ismaili is a business wizard and diplomatic advisor with multiple degrees from the United States and the United Kingdom. He was entrusted with the mission of the Sultan and began to shuttle secretly between Washington and Tehran. Al-Ismaili is actually very mysterious. I don't know if his resume is true. It is said that he has degrees in telecommunications, liberal arts, industrial engineering, business administration, and management, and has obtained a doctorate in philosophy and a doctorate in economics from universities in the United States and the United Kingdom. It seems that this person is either a genius or a degree hobby collector. He conveyed Tehran's wish list to the White House. It was not so much an exchange condition as a token of trust-building. He asked for the release of Iranian citizens imprisoned by Western countries for violating sanctions, such as the former Iranian ambassador to Jordan, Tajik, who was under house arrest in the United Kingdom for allegedly assisting Iran in purchasing US military night-vision equipment, and the Iranian woman Mirhollikan, who was serving a sentence in the United States for allegedly exporting US dual-use equipment, night-vision goggles, to Iran. It is not known why they are so fond of night-vision goggles. At the same time, he asked to increase the quota of Iranian students studying in the United States to study nuclear technology here, and even asked the United States to designate an armed organization attacking the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Pakistan as a terrorist organization. This negotiation was a complex and long-term trust game. After nearly a year of efforts by al-Ismaili's team, Tehran first released Sarah Shourd, who was in poor health. It was said that Oman had paid a bail of 500,000 US dollars for this. A year later, after another 1 million US dollars of bail was paid, the hostages Fattal and Bauer were also released. In return, the Iranians detained by the West, the two friends who helped Iran buy night-vision goggles, were quietly released and returned to Tehran via Muscat. The success of this hostage exchange clearly demonstrated to the Obama government the value and reliability of the Oman channel. A top-secret channel that can completely bypass the media, Congress, and all allies and reach the core of power in Tehran was officially launched.
The Involvement of John Kerry
At the same time, John Kerry, then the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was also inspired by this opportunity. Kerry is a politician full of passion and obsession with diplomacy. He is very anti-war and believes that the failure of diplomacy is war. Before becoming Secretary of State, Kerry had set his sights on Oman. Kerry once represented the Democratic Party in the 2004 presidential election against George W. Bush. If the fact that the Bush administration had lied to the American people to start the Iraq War had been exposed at that time, history might have been rewritten. Kerry's wife, Teresa Heinz, is the heir to the Heinz food empire. You may not be familiar with Heinz, but you must know Heinz. His family wealth is very considerable, with a net worth estimated at 750 million US dollars. On December 8, 2011, Kerry even missed an important vote in the Senate for a secret mission. He boarded a commercial flight to the Gulf and appeared in the palace of Sultan Qaboos the next day. The two had a private conversation for more than two hours. In this meeting, Kerry, through the Sultan, conveyed a very tempting but not officially authorized signal to Iran by the White House. He personally believed that the United States could eventually accept Iran's retention of a certain degree of uranium enrichment capacity in its territory as long as it could ensure its peaceful use. This bold hint far exceeded the public bottom line in Washington at that time, but it laid the groundwork for the difficult compromise in the future. The door to secret diplomacy was quietly opened by a key from Oman.
The Early Stages of Negotiations
Although the secret channel had been established at that time, the initial formal contacts were disappointing. In July 2012, Obama's representatives, including Hillary Clinton's deputy chief of staff, Jake Sullivan, secretly flew to Muscat. Sullivan is a typical American elite. He graduated from Yale University with a bachelor's degree, obtained a master's degree from the University of Oxford, and a doctorate from Yale Law School. Sullivan was full of expectations, but he found that Iran had sent a middle-level diplomat who had no right to make any decisions and could only repeat the cliché of "lifting sanctions first and then talking about other things" like a parrot. The US side was very frustrated and finally left. This secret diplomacy seemed to have hit a wall.
The Change in Iran's Political Situation
Then, in June 2013, a decisive change occurred in Iran's political situation. The moderate cleric Hassan Rouhani unexpectedly won the presidential election. Rouhani had once been Iran's chief nuclear negotiator. He knew very well that tough confrontation would only lead the country's economy to collapse. His campaign slogan was "reason and moderation," and he promised to end Iran's international isolation and save the people's livelihood that had been devastated by Western sanctions. At this time, some people may ask, isn't it said that the real power holder in Iran is a religious leader named Ali Khamenei? Why is there still a presidential election? Iran has a very unique system of combining religion and politics, also known as the Islamic Republic. In this system, the highest power of the country is in the hands of a religious leader called the Supreme Leader. He is not only responsible for religious affairs but also掌管s the country's military, security, judicial, and other important institutions. In other words, the Supreme Leader is the real helmsman, and the steering wheel is firmly in his hands, a bit like Imu in "One Piece." So it is very reasonable to call him Ali Khamenei. In addition to the Supreme Leader, Iran also has a president elected by the people, who is responsible for the country's daily administrative affairs, such as economic policies, social welfare, and educational reforms. However, the president's power is not as great as that of the president in Western countries. Many key decisions, including foreign policy or security issues, are still finally decided by the Supreme Leader. The president is a bit like the Admiral of the Navy, the person in charge of secular affairs. In addition, Iran also has a special institution called the Guardian Council of the Constitution. It is composed of religious jurists and legal experts and is responsible for ensuring that the laws passed by the parliament comply with Islamic teachings and the spirit of the constitution. It is also responsible for reviewing the qualifications of presidential and parliamentary candidates. This means that if someone wants to run for office but is considered not loyal enough to the system by the council, his campaign may not even be able to start. We can understand this council as the Five Elders or the Knights of the Gods. In short, Iran's system is a mixed model with religious authority as the core, combined with certain democratic elements. The power is concentrated, but the division of labor is very clear. It not only integrates some modern political elements but also reflects a very deep religious tradition. It is very unique and easy to cause a lot of controversy and misunderstandings.
The New Phase of Negotiations
After Rouhani took office, he immediately played a trump card and appointed Javad Zarif as Foreign Minister. Zarif had studied and lived in the United States for nearly 20 years and spoke impeccable English. He was very familiar with Western culture and political operations. Zarif is a typical scholar-type political elite in Iran. He is a visiting professor at the School of International Relations and the University of Tehran, teaching diplomacy and international organization courses. From 2013 to 2021, Zarif served as Foreign Minister, which was the peak of his political career. After taking office, he immediately used Twitter to congratulate the Jews all over the world on the New Year in English and replied to a questioner, saying that the person who was considered to have denied the Holocaust, the former President Ahmadinejad, had already left. This carefully planned public relations campaign conveyed a clear signal to the world: Iran has changed. Tehran's charm offensive officially kicked off. After Rouhani took office, the secret channel in Oman was revitalized. The United Nations General Assembly in September 2013 became a grand stage for this diplomatic drama. The eyes of the world were focused on whether Obama and Rouhani could achieve a historic handshake. However, at the last moment, Rouhani, fearing a strong backlash from the domestic hardliners, cleverly avoided this meeting on the grounds that the alcohol provided at the luncheon did not conform to religious regulations. Just when everyone thought that the opportunity had been missed again, a dramatic scene occurred. When Rouhani was driving to John F. Kennedy Airport in New York, he received a phone call. On the other end of the phone was US President Barack Obama. With Zarif's translation, the two leaders had a 15-minute conversation. This was the first direct conversation between the heads of state of the United States and Iran since the Iranian Revolution in 1979. The ice of history was finally broken in this unexpected way.
The Dual-Track Diplomacy
After this historic phone call, the focus of the negotiations was officially transferred to Geneva, Switzerland. However, at this time, a carefully designed dual-track diplomacy drama was being staged, and its complexity was comparable to a spy movie. In the spotlight of the public, it was the US delegation led by then-Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman. She held round after round of difficult negotiations with the diplomats of the P5+1 (China, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, the United States, and Germany) and the open Iranian delegation at the InterContinental Hotel in Geneva. The hotel lobby was挤满了 hundreds of journalists from all over the world, who were waiting anxiously for any news like waiting for Godot. The Iran nuclear issue has attracted the attention of the international community since 2002. After years of sanctions, confrontation, and intermittent contacts, the P5+1 mechanism, that is, the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany, was officially launched in 2006 to specifically deal with such issues. However, at the other end of the city, in the quiet lakeside rooms of another five-star hotel, the secret team from the Oman channel, led by Deputy Secretary of State William Burns and presidential advisor Jake Sullivan, was also conducting more in-depth and substantial negotiations with the core figures of Iran. This secret channel was quietly finalizing the real terms of the agreement and finding out the real bottom lines of both sides. One is public, the other is secret. One is responsible for dealing with allies, and the other is responsible for core breakthroughs. This dual-track mode allows the United States to claim a very tough stance when facing allies and the international community, but it can also make key compromises in the secret room. This is a carefully choreographed diplomatic scam, and its purpose is to achieve the seemingly impossible goal.
The Obstacles to Negotiations
However, in the diplomatic chess game, there is never a smooth game. When the consensus reached between the United States and Iran through the secret channel was put on the table, unexpected resistance came from all directions. The first to publicly disrupt the situation was the traditional ally of the United States, France. In the Geneva negotiations in November 2013, when a draft of the interim agreement secretly finalized by the United States and Iran was submitted to the P5+1, then-French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius felt deceived and betrayed. He believed that this draft made too many concessions to Iran, especially allowing Iran to retain the Arak heavy-water reactor. Fabius is an experienced and very tough diplomat. He directly walked in front of the media cameras and publicly stated that France could not accept a sucker's deal. His sudden attack caught Kerry and the US delegation off guard and almost caused the negotiations that had just made some breakthroughs to collapse on the spot. Kerry's team privately scolded Fabius, believing that he was a drama queen, currying favor with Israel and Arab countries, and even did not understand the scientific details of the agreement. However, in any case, France's tough stance exposed the deep裂痕 within the Western camp. More deadly than the opposition of allies is the political storm from within the United States. In March 2015, at the critical moment of reaching the agreement framework, 47 Republican senators, under the planning of Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, jointly wrote a letter to Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. This letter, in an almost diplomatic provocation tone, said: "We note that you may not understand our constitutional system at all. Any agreement that has not been approved by Congress is just an executive agreement between the president and you. The next president can abolish it with a stroke of the pen." This unprecedented letter was tantamount to telling the Iranians not to believe Obama. His promise could be invalidated at any time. This shocked and angered the Kerry team in Lausanne, Switzerland, because they were worried that it would completely destroy the Iranians' trust in the negotiations. And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed the opposition to the climax. He ignored the opposition of the White House and personally went to the US Congress to deliver a speech to the members of the two houses, regarding the agreement that was taking shape as a threat to Israel's survival and a historic mistake. He claimed that the agreement would not prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons but would only pave the way for it to obtain nuclear bombs. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu claimed at the time that Iran could obtain nuclear weapons in just a few months, which was a huge danger to Israel and the United States at that time. It should be noted that this was 10 years ago, and Iran still does not have nuclear weapons. If it did, Israel would not be able to carry out such air strikes on Iran now.
The Role of Ali Khamenei
However, perhaps none of these external voices of opposition is as mysterious and crucial as the variable from Tehran, the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei himself. During the entire negotiation process, Khamenei's role was like that of a person with mental illness. No one could see through his true intentions. On the one hand, he allowed Rouhani and Zarif to negotiate with the "Great Satan" United States in the front. On the other hand, he constantly made extremely tough speeches in the country, putting forward red lines that were completely contrary to those on the negotiation table. In a conversation in July 2014, just as Kerry and Zarif were bargaining over thousands of centrifuges, Khamenei suddenly declared that Iran's ultimate goal was to have 190,000 separative work units (SWU), which required at least 190,000 centrifuges. This number made the Iranian negotiators in Vienna very confused. Zarif privately told the US side that he had no idea why the Supreme Leader suddenly said this. Khamenei's shadow always loomed over the negotiation table. Was he performing for the domestic hardliners, striving for more bargaining chips for the negotiation, or did he never really want to reach an agreement from the beginning? This huge uncertainty made every participant walk on thin ice.
The Final Negotiations in Vienna
By the summer of 2015, all the players had gathered in the Coburg Palace in Vienna, Austria, for the final fateful sprint. At this time, the negotiations had entered the most core and difficult technical details. In order to confront the veteran of Iran's nuclear program, physics doctor Ali Akbar Salehi, the United States also sent its own secret weapon, the Secretary of Energy, Ernest Moniz, who is also a world-class nuclear physicist. Salehi is a famous and outstanding scholar in Iran, as well as a senior diplomat and nuclear physicist. He is widely regarded as the core technical personnel and key negotiator of Iran's nuclear program. He has played a pivotal role in Iran's political, diplomatic, and scientific and technological fields. He studied for a doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in his early years, and his dissertation, "Neutronics in the Resonance Region of Fast and Thermal Reactors," can be found with his name on it. It is interesting that the US Secretary of Energy, Moniz, who is negotiating with him, is also a very outstanding physicist. This is a showdown that the media called the "battle of physicists." Coincidentally, Salehi and Moniz both studied or taught at MIT in the 1970s. Salehi studied for a doctorate there, while Moniz taught there. Moniz is also a top student. He obtained a bachelor's degree in physics in 1966 and later a doctorate in theoretical physics from Stanford University. Since 1973, Moniz has been a physics teacher at MIT and has taught there for a long time. He once led the entire physics department and served as the founding director of the MIT Energy Initiative. Unexpectedly, decades later, these two MIT alumni sat at opposite ends of the negotiation table that determined world peace, using professional terms that outsiders could not understand to argue about issues such as the model of centrifuges, the stockpile of enriched uranium, and the renovation plan of the Arak heavy-water reactor. In order to build a good relationship, Moniz even brought a very special gift for Salehi, who had just had a granddaughter: a baby onesie with the pattern of the MIT mascot, the beaver. It can be seen that Moniz has a very high emotional intelligence. In 2013, he succeeded Steven Chu as the 13th US Secretary of Energy nominated by President Obama and was unanimously approved by the Senate. His term of office lasted until January 2017. His nomination was regarded as having received rare bipartisan praise.
The Intense Negotiations
In the last days, the Coburg Palace became a pressure cooker. Long-term negotiations made everyone on the verge of collapse. According to the book "Iran War," in a dispute over the details of lifting sanctions, Kerry and Zarif had a fierce quarrel in the hotel basement, and the sound was so loud that the whole hotel could hear it. An assistant had to run into the room and whispered to Kerry, "Secretary of State, please calm down. The guests upstairs have been disturbed." The next morning, the German Foreign Minister joked to Kerry, "John, the whole hotel heard your voice yesterday." In another confrontation, when Zarif tried to overturn a consensus that all parties thought had already been reached, the usually mild-mannered EU Foreign Affairs Chief Federica Mogherini warned that if this continued, she might suggest that all parties go home directly and stop talking. Zarif immediately glared at her and roared, "Never threaten an Iranian." This sentence made all the diplomats present feel a chill. The Russian Foreign Minister, known for his cold face, tried to ease the atmosphere and interjected, "Don't threaten a Russian either."
The Relationship between Kerry and Zarif
Despite the constant quarrels at that time, the main negotiators, Kerry and Zarif, established a complex personal relationship that was difficult for outsiders to understand. They spent hundreds of hours in one-on-one talks. During the breaks in the negotiations, they would take walks together by the Lake Geneva and stroll on the streets of Vienna. These pictures were sent back to Tehran and immediately triggered a fierce attack from the hardliners. They accused Zarif of getting too close to the "Great Satan." Both of the main characters were under great political pressure at home. They both knew very well that any mistake could make them lose everything at home. It was this common fate and pressure that made them have to rely on each other in the fierce confrontation and jointly find the only possible way out.
The Final Compromise
The focus of the final negotiation fell on two issues that seemed to have nothing to do with nuclear weapons but were crucial to Iran: lifting the restrictions on its ballistic missile program and lifting the embargo on its purchase and sale of conventional weapons. Iran insisted that since the nuclear issue had been resolved, all relevant sanctions must be lifted immediately. The United States and its allies firmly opposed this. They believed that the only purpose of Iran's development of ballistic missiles was to carry nuclear warheads, and lifting the arms embargo was equivalent to allowing Iran to transport more weapons to the Assad regime in Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon. The final deadlock almost destroyed the efforts of several years. Finally, after another round of all-night bargaining, the two sides reached a final compromise. The arms embargo would be lifted in five years, and the restrictions on ballistic missiles would be lifted in eight years. The last barrier to the agreement was removed.
The Birth of the Iran Nuclear Deal
On July 14, 2015, after 18 days of almost non-stop marathon negotiations, a 159-page Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was finally born in Vienna. At the press conference to announce the agreement, Kerry, who has always been tough, choked up when speaking. The Vietnam War veteran said that he had personally experienced war and knew very well that diplomacy must be exhausted before force. President Obama delivered a speech at the White House, claiming that this agreement was not based on trust but on verification. It successfully prevented Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and avoided a possible catastrophic war in the Middle East.
The Aftermath of the Agreement
However, the book "Iran War" reveals a chilling ending. Just 10 days after the Vienna agreement was reached, Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force, who was sanctioned by the United Nations and prohibited from traveling globally, swaggered onto a flight to Moscow. In the Kremlin, he met with the Russian Defense Minister. In front of him, a military map of Syria was spread out, and they jointly planned a large-scale military intervention that would completely change the situation in Syria to save their common ally, the Assad regime, which was then on the verge of collapse. This scene perfectly confirmed the deepest fear of the opponents of the agreement. The Obama government had originally hoped that the nuclear agreement would be a starting point to open the door to cooperation between Iran and the United States on regional issues such as Syria and Iraq. However, Soleimani's trip to Moscow and Khamenei's speech immediately after the agreement, reaffirming that Iran's policy towards the United States would not change at all, mercilessly shattered this optimistic fantasy. The agreement triggered one of the most intense political struggles in modern American history. In the Middle East, Sunni countries such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates deeply felt that they had been completely betrayed by their most important ally, the United States. In their view, the agreement not only failed to completely contain Iran but also lifted the economic shackles on Iran, allowing Tehran to obtain tens of billions of dollars in unfrozen funds, thereby more powerfully expanding its influence in the entire Middle East, supporting from the Assad regime in Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon to the Houthi rebels in Yemen. Saudi officials told the Americans that Iran had actually controlled the capitals of four Arab countries: Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut, and Sana'a. A broader proxy war between Sunnis and Shiites for regional dominance became more intense.
The End of the Book and the Future
The end of the book "Iran War" does not give a simple answer but leaves a series of profound questions. Is the Iran nuclear deal a great achievement of the Obama government, which, through arduous diplomatic efforts, avoided a potential war, or is it just a short-sighted deal based on illusory hopes, which, at the cost of huge strategic concessions, instead opened the Pandora's box and fueled Iran's regional ambitions? This Iran war, which revolves around nuclear weapons, sanctions, secret deals, and proxy wars, has not ended with a piece of paper. Perhaps it has entered the next chapter in a new, more dangerous, and more complex way. In fact, just three years later, the Trump administration withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal and re-imposed economic sanctions on Iran. Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif's friendly foreign policy towards the West was strongly criticized by the domestic hardliners and conservatives, who believed that he had sacrificed too much of Iran's interests in the peace talks but failed to obtain corresponding returns. With the United States unilaterally withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, the domestic criticism of Zarif became increasingly fierce. Facing the dual pressure from both inside and outside, Zarif admitted in February 2019 that the pressure from within was more exhausting than the pressure from abroad. On February 25 of the same year, he announced his resignation as Foreign Minister through Instagram. On July 31, 2019, the Trump administration announced sanctions against Zarif, further exacerbating his difficult situation. Subsequently, Zarif was appointed as the Vice President of the Islamic Republic, but his term of office was full of twists and turns. Just 10 days later, he announced his resignation, but two weeks later, he announced that he would continue to perform his duties. On March 3, 2025, Zarif announced his resignation again. Opponents questioned the legitimacy of his tenure because his children were all born in the United States. Zarif's appointment as Vice President violated the Iranian Constitution. He was really in a dilemma. The physicist Salehi, who represented Iran in negotiations with the United States, was also sanctioned by the Trump administration in 2020. And Soleimani was assassinated at Baghdad Airport in 2020. After President Trump regained the White House, he restarted the nuclear negotiations with Iran. After several rounds of negotiations, the two sides were preparing to conduct a new round of negotiations in the middle of this month. However, before the negotiations began, Israel suddenly carried out a decapitation operation against Iran, killing the nuclear physicist and chief negotiator. In this case, the possibility of the United States taking military action against Iran has increased significantly. If you are familiar with the history of the Iraq War, you may find that the scene in front of you is very familiar. Israel has basically played the same script again.
Conclusion
This video is recorded here. The peace in the Middle East may be far away. Thank you very much for watching. We will see you next time.