Press TV has conducted an interview with Jan Oberg, founder of transnational.org, to discuss US failure to approve licenses for global aviation giants such as Airbus and Boeing to export planes to Iran.
Here is a rough transcription of the interview:
Press TV: What do you make of this that the United States on the one hand gave the okay but now it does not seem like it wants to actually go through with the deal with the Boeing aircraft? How do you see this?
Oberg: Well l would see that as a bad omen for the future because things will get worse under both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. We will wait to see who it will be.
Now of course it confirms that the United States in this case is a country that does not meet its own promises. It is obvious from the nuclear deal that it should lift its sanctions and this deal which is something like 25 billion dollars should go through.
There is no reason to have new sanctions instigated after the nuclear deal unless what you want to do is to keep on being nasty, to keep on hitting the Iranian people, it is not only about airplanes, it is about everything else that is needed. I have just been to Iran, I know that a lot of things are needed and it is about keeping on showing that you are in power but I must say it is an intellectual and moral power that is decreasing because we now know that United States does not honor its deals and that is very, very sad to see and of course very sad for the Iranian people.
Press TV: What do you think at the end of the day, what does Washington want? On the one hand as you said they were also signatory to the deal P5+1, at the end of the day we see that they do not want to stand by their part of the deal. How do you read this? What exactly does Washington want when it comes to the Islamic Republic of Iran?
Oberg: Well madam you are asking a kind of rational question - do they want something, do they have a strategy, is there a goal, is this some means that lead to a goal achievement and things like that – you know, I have given up long ago to see it.
You look at what is happening in Syria now. Pentagon is at war with the CIA which is at war with State Department and some are bombing and some are not bombing and the President does not do or say anything. We should not take the United States anymore for a country that has a unified foreign policy stand. It seems to have different factions who are doing different things.
Press TV: So if that is the case according to what you are saying, if that is the case, if you were in the place of Iranian officials and you are dealing with an entity as you say that does not have unity within its government itself, what position would you take in dealing with the United States?
Oberg: I would keep on building opinion for my case, I would keep on pointing to the nuclear deal, keep on pointing to the need for United States … to honor its promises, I would keep on having negotiations with Boeing or whoever else about these planes but I would also have a secondary strategy which is if this does not work out I would turn to others whether Russia or China or whatever and I think that is unfortunately what we see in a number of cases.
Iran and other countries are turning away from the United States and the West because we are playing the games we are which are no longer reliable, no longer productive, not anymore very friendly. I think United States has become a very grumpy power, teaching people lessons all over the world and not ending up with any positive results for anyone not even for itself because not trading with Iran cost American companies a lot, in this case 25 billion dollars according to the Los Angeles Times recently, it cost a lot for the West and for the Europeans not to be because the Europeans are very afraid about dealing with Iran because there is this mechanism saying it cannot be done in dollar terms and almost all economic transactions are for a nanosecond in the international transaction and currency exchange as passing the dollar meaning that this is about something much more than the passenger planes.
So I would look for a secondary strategy, a way out if these grumpy stupid counterproductive games are continued by particularly the United States.