Qalibaf Defies, Sazandegi Regrets

On October 25, Iranian Parliamentary Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Qalibaf, addressing Iran’s Parliament in person for the first time since February 28, dismissed U.S. threats of war and assassination and conditioned any possible engagement on U.S. restitution. A day later, technocratic Sazandegi, remembering gentler times, lamented the President Barack Obama-era opportunity Tehran squandered – an implicit rebuke of hard-line intransigence.

• October 25: Parliamentary Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Qalibaf, speaking before the Iranian Parliament took up its regular business, was quoted by Mashregh News as saying:
  • “We will not be intimidated, and we are ready to respond to any act of insolence against the territorial integrity of great Iran in ways beyond their imagination. Threats of all-out war or assassination will therefore not make the Iranian nation back down from its rights and interests. Until the Americans change their behavior, abandon their bullying and greed, and make amends for their broken commitments in an objective, tangible, and real way on the ground, no claim of theirs will carry an iota of credibility for the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
  • “As I have declared before, we have nothing new to say. It was America that, through miscalculation and war against Iran, stepped into a quagmire, and now it is they who must take the necessary steps to save themselves.”
• October 26: International affairs analyst Fereydoun Majlesi, in technocratic Sazandegi, commented on former President Barack Obama’s October 24 speech in Detroit:
  • “Obama’s recent remarks at a campaign rally in Michigan remind some of the opportunities Iran had during his presidency to end its hostility with America … For Iran, the Obama era was a nearly unprecedented opportunity to use the easing of tensions to expand economic relations and reduce external pressure while preserving its own security considerations. Tehran failed to turn this opportunity into a lasting achievement, although America’s decision to withdraw from the JCPOA and Washington’s political constraints also played a decisive part in the failure of this path.”
  • “The experience of those years shows that a nuclear agreement alone could not resolve all the disputes, but it could have been a starting point for managing them. Had deeper economic ties and more durable political mechanisms taken shape, the cost of confrontation might have risen for both sides, although one cannot say with certainty that such a process would have prevented America’s withdrawal from the agreement.”
  • “The Obama experience showed that negotiation can be a way to contain a crisis; but turning that path into lasting peace requires difficult decisions, mutual interests, and a will that goes beyond a one-off agreement.”

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