US must show goodwill in Iran nuclear deal: Analyst

Press TV has interviewed Kaveh Afrasiabi, an author and political scientist in Boston, about Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif urging Europe and the US to take “practical steps” towards lifting banking and economic sanctions on Iran under last year’s nuclear agreement between Tehran and the P5+1 group of countries.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: What do you make of this? On the one hand New Zealand like so many other countries is very keen on actually doing business with Iran but when it comes down to the finalization of transactions, there is always that financial problem in the middle though Washington has given guarantees to many countries, European countries included, that there is no problem in actually working with Iran, it seems that there is still something about that threat by Washington that is keeping a lot of countries from finalizing on that dotted line. How do you see it sir? What do you think is taking place?  

Afrasiabi: Well I think that Dr. Zarif is absolutely correct in calling on the US to take practical steps to show its good will in implementing its part of the nuclear deal and case in point just tomorrow India’s prime minister is visiting Tehran and the Iranian and Indian officials are trying very hard for the transfer of some six billion dollars of oil money that India owes to Iran and yet the European banks refused to do the transaction because of Iran’s restricted access to US dollar.

So the US could show good will by sending the necessary signals to the European banks, so that this what is referred to as one of [the] agreements can take place and Iran gets its oil money and that will go a long way in assuring [the] Iranians that the US is not making just a paper commitment just as the Iranian Supreme Leader stated recently. So there are a lot of tangible steps that the US can do in order to faithfully implement its part of the bargain.

Press TV: And we have seen US Secretary of State John Kerry actually make this statement that has verbally assured the Europeans that there are no problems in actually doing business with Iran but why is it as you have just said they can actually, the Americans can take the tangible steps to basically reassure these foreign countries, why do you think that aspect has not been done, it has only been orally said but as we always say actions speak louder than words so why haven’t they?

Afrasiabi: Well unfortunately the US has been engaged in legal doublespeak with Iran and this is to some extent quite hypocritical because the US is telling the Europeans go ahead, it is fine to do business with Iran but sanctions its own American companies and imposes hefty penalties on anyone daring to do so and as a result Secretary Kerry was strongly rebuffed by the major European banks when he met with them earlier this month.

And so the US has to address this issue and resolve the lingering problems, otherwise just as the Iranian foreign minister stated recently in an interview with the US magazine, the nuclear agreement will start to falter and it will be in serious jeopardy.

Press TV: Well what about that? Let’s look at that aspect of it because why would the Americans on the one hand sign along with the original nuclear agreement which Iran has been adhering to since its agreement was enforced but yet the Americans have continually tried to somehow get around their part of the commitment? Why would that be the case? Why on the one hand the US would agree to this nuclear deal but then on the other hand at every turn it seems to be very, very problematic for them to allow what should be occurring to actually take place?

Afrasiabi: Well unfortunately the United States on a broader level has a very bad and mean habit of not honoring its agreement. It broke hundreds of its agreements with the American Indians and so many of the international treaties that signed on to, it has negated over decades in the modern times. So Iran is not an exception and one has to look into the structure of the US government to find out why it is taking these contradictory approaches that is harmful to its own interests.

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