Iran’s active resistance and strategic patience have nullified all plans of western opponents to restrain Iran. In the latest meeting on Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the western countries stepped back from their previously harsh policies. It seems that Iran has been successful in restraining the west, as the remaining members of JCPOA Committee stopped talking about using the trigger mechanism.

Based on Paragraph 37 of JCPOA, the trigger mechanism can automatically reactivate previous international sanctions against Iran.

In fact, Europe did not do much to offset the damage inflicted on Iran by withdrawal of the United States from JCPOA, as Europeans had wrongly interpreted Iran’s strategic patience as being passive. Europe though it has nothing to worry about; on the one hand, JCPOA seemed like a good block to Iran’s nuclear activities and on the other, U.S. was putting pressure on Iran to stop its economic and political progress and weaken its stance in the region.

With the end of Iran’s strategic patience, a new chapter was opened and Iran revealed its new strategy that is active resistance.

Tehran announced that it will gradually decrease its commitment to the JCPOA and gives the other side some time to compensate for its former inactivity. At first, it was hard for Europe to believe such thing as they had grown accustomed to Iran’s patience, but with Iran’s threats, Europe woke up from its former ignorance and started threatening Iran.

However, these threats did not change Iran’s decision, and Tehran took two major steps in its way toward reducing its commitments to the JCPOA.

Tensions over JCPOA coincided with new conflicts in the region. Americans did not think that Iran will show a reaction after they drove their spying drone into Iran’s territory, but Iran seized the drone and changed all former plans of the West powers.

This time, U.S. president who was under a lot of pressure over the negative public opinion, did not show any reaction out of fear of rising war and thanked Iranians for not targeting a passenger flight.

The capture of the American drone and U.S. inability to give a firm response crucially changed Iran’s position in the region and gave Iran a winning edge. After this, Americans tried to impede Iran’s progress by using Britain.

London, who was dealing with its own internal elections, seized an Iranian oil tanker to support the U.S. Following this incident, London received loads of internal criticism for blindly following U.S. in this game, Iran lost a ship, but Britain lost much more because the country claims to be an international influencer.

After this, other players in the region, including some Arab countries became aware of Iran’s new strategy of active resistance. This was a great distress to these countries as they realized if the West puts extra pressures on Iran or attack the country, they will also have to suffer the consequences.

The West political and economic war against Iran was supposed to crush the country, but Iran’s active resistance changed all these plans. West which was trying to restrain Iran, got restrained itself; now they can neither increase tensions by taking the risk of starting a new war nor can they tolerate the humiliation of being passive and having their powerful image ruined.

Recent incidents not only changed the power balance in the region, but it was also a test for the war option. The capture of American drone showed that the U.S., contrary to all its advertisements, is extremely afraid of starting a war, especially now that Donald Trump is on the verge of the new round of presidential elections. The incident also proved another point, that Iran is not afraid of war.

The West policy for restraining Iran backfired on them and put Tehran in a position to restrain the West. Finally, the Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has best describe this situation by saying “there will be no war and no negotiations.” The drone incident proved the first part of this statement and Iran’s firm stand so far has proved the second part.

* Author: Mohammad Ghaderi , Tehran Times editor-in-chief 

His page on Twitter : @ghaderi62 - and Gmail address : m.ghaderi62@gmail.com