TEHRAN — After Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi virtually addressed the 76th United Nations General Assembly, many political analysts commented on the contents of his speech. However, what is interesting is that the authors of the JCPOA are crying over an empty coffin.

To examine this issue, let’s review what the president told the UN General Assembly on Tuesday.

“Sanctions are the U.S. new way of war with the nations of the world,” Raisi said at his speech. 
Is this a remark that anyone can object it? No. The fact that the United States has imposed crippling sanctions against Iran cannot be denied. Even the American or hardline Israeli analysts admit this. As the Iranian president rightfully said at his speech, sanctions against the Iranian nation started “not with my country’s nuclear program; they even predate the Islamic Revolution and go back to the year 1951 when oil nationalization went underway in Iran…”

The United States went too far in its illegal sanctions on Iran to the extent that strict financial sanctions even impeded the import of medicine and medical equipment to Iran at the time of the global Coronavirus pandemic. There is little doubt that the Americans committed medical terrorism against the Iranian people. Raisi also pointed to this fact in his speech.

It seems that the thinkers, who helped draft the JCPOA, don’t agree with the text anymore

“Sanctions, especially sanctions on medicine at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, are crimes against humanity,” he said at his virtual address at the UN General Assembly.

He also emphasized, “I, on behalf of the Iranian nation and millions of refugees hosted by my country, would like to condemn the continued illegal U.S. sanctions especially in the area of humanitarian items, and demand that this organized crime against humanity be recorded as a symbol and reality of the so-called American human rights.”

On Tuesday night, a network of analysts and commentators started bashing Raisi’s speech, as well as screaming over a revival of the JCPOA. Since the new Raisi administration took the power in early August, Iran started to patiently evaluate the situation to return to the negotiations table. In a phone call on Sept. 14 with former British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian said that Iran, while is naturally in the process of “consultations on how to continue the Vienna talks, it has reiterated that it will welcome negotiations that have tangible results and secure the rights and interests of the Iranian people.”   

This is what the Iranian president had previously touched on during first TV interview on September 5.

“Negotiations is an option as a tool for diplomacy, but negotiation under pressure and threats is not acceptable at all,” Raisi insisted.

After Raisi’s speech, Ali Vaez, Director of Iran Project and Senior Advisor to the Crisis Group tweeted, “.@raisi_com’s speech at #UNGA was one of the most anti-American speeches I’ve heard from an Iranian president in years.” 

Barbara Slavin, Director of the Future of Iran Initiative at the Atlantic Council, replied to Vaez’s tweet, saying, “As harsh as @Ahmadinejad1956 but more coldly rational. did you notice at the end, tho, that #Raisi said #Iran wanted 'large scale economic and political cooperation with all countries of the world.' We need to remember, as well, that he is only the frontman, not the decider.” 

Yet, the most predictable strategy was outlined by the notorious CEO of The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), Mark Dubowitz.

He tweeted, “Raisi’s new negotiating team will ask for total sanctions relief and give less than the JCPOA. @USEnvoyIran @Rob_Malley will give them 97% and then pretend that they held the line and that there’s a “longer and stronger” deal to be had.”

It seems that the thinkers, who helped draft the JCPOA, don’t agree with the text anymore, as it ostensibly contradicts their desires. The plan is now clear. Bashing Raisi and his foreign policy team with every tool in order to write a “longer and stronger” deal to satisfy desires is not helpful at all. But what is really a longer and stronger deal? 

The United States has always been interested in dragging the Iranian missile program into the negotiations. For eight years, since the intensive negotiations started, Iran has made it crystal clear that its defensive capabilities are not up for negotiations. Yet, the United States is using various pressure tools to impose a deal on Iran. Iran has always reiterated that it will only go back to the original 2015 JCPOA text, if and only if the U.S. verifiably lifts all sanctions. 

As for Raisi’s speech, he condemned U.S. terrorism and extremism in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, asked for the lifting of all sanctions, and restated that Iran will return to the Vienna talks to intended to revitalize the nuclear deal. If this is too harsh for the Crisis Group, then it shows that the JCPOA revival is not their concern. Had it been so, they would not have objected to a rational speech in which Raisi insisted on the need to lift sanctions. It is advised that the thinkers would not shed crocodile tears over the JCPOA revival.