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We begin tonight’s edition of A Window to the Fatherland with Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh reading one of his poems from the book of his collected works.
Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh:
We continue the program with talking to our special guest of every Thursday, Dr. Mohsen Sazegara, for his views about news of Iran and the Middle East.
Rouhani yesterday threatened that if Iran is not allowed to export its oil through the Persian Gulf then no other country in the region would be allowed to do it either.
His claim comes at a time when the super oil tanker Grace 1 is still wandering in international waters and while the Revolutionary Guards has said it owns the tanker, Iran’s maritime and shipping authority has said they are the owners of it.
What exactly is going on here?
Mohsen Sazegara:
Rouhani had already said the same thing a few weeks ago and in fact it was his threatening language that led to US despatching its extra naval forces and warships to the region and it is now putting together an international naval force to provide safe passage for tankers that carry more than 32 percent of oil exported to the world through this strategic waterway.
At the same time if the regime is fully cornered by the sanctions it may try to cause turmoil in the region and that would lead to this military alliance to respond and further escalate the crisis.
The regime resorted to causing explosions on the Japanese oil tanker in June but I do not think either Rouhani or the Revolutionary Guards were directly behind the decision for this action and it would have been a tactic by Khamenei and his son Mujtaba.
And now we hear that the Israelis have been behind bombing the bases of the regime’s proxies in the countries of the region in recent weeks but the regime has remained silent so not to lose its face.
Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh:
Rouhani has blasted Ahmadinejad for accusing his government of failing to sort out the problems of the country by saying Ahmadinejad’s administration had wasted 10 years of reaching a nuclear agreement with the world.
Mohsen Sazegara:
It was actually Khamenei who wasted these ten years by ordering Ahmadinejad not to negotiate, but as the sanctions began to etch away the revenues of his own financial empire and cause instability within the regime, it was Khamenei again who this time told Rouhani to start negotiating with the world powers, hence the nuclear deal.
