Behind the Headlines/August 14

Jamshid Chalangi:

In tonight’s program:

We look at the agreement by the leaders of the five states bordering the Caspian Sea on its legal status with the help of the oil expert Dr. Reza Taghizadeh, and find out about the implications of this deal fro Iran.

Also, is it true that the Islamicrepublic regime has sold out Iran’s national interests by accepting this deal and is now nothing more than a cheap card played by Moscow in its foreign policy expansions?

Dr. Reza Taghizadeh:

I wish the Islamic republic regime would have acted with more transparency on this issue. It should have shared the details of this agreement and the negotiations that led to its signing with the Iranian people.

However, these information have remained secret and now we have been presented with an agreement between five countries that they call the Convention of the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea, which effectively replaces the one that previously existed only between Russia and Iran.

We must note that the Russians had already signed an initial agreement on the Caspian Sea with Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, and the republic of Azerbaijan had included part ownership of the rights to the sea’s resources in its constitution and Iran had been left out of all these separate agreements between Moscow and its former soviets.

Unfortunately Mr. Rouhani has signed an agreement that if it becomes effective the former 50% share of our country’s rights to the sea’s riches will be reduced to only a thin coastal line waterway for fishing.

This agreement denies Iran of anyaccess to the sea’s rich oil and gas resources. Iran has not been able to attract any foreign investment for exploration of these resources and is unlikely it ever will in the future, given the terms of this signed deal.

Now Mr Rouhani has been smiling as if he is the winner of this deal. He is naively saying that from now on no foreign country will be able to use the waters of the Caspian Sea for military presence.

But he deliberately forgets to say that by accepting this Iran has made itself a satellite state to the Russians whose military presence will be constant in the sea.

Rouhani is only hoping to use this new corridor of access to the other four signatories of the deal to circumvent the US sanctions. But in reality he has sold out Iran’s national interests just to keep the Islamic republic regime in power for a few more days.

He has signed this deal with the direct agreement of Khamenei and their assumption is to abrogate the deal and walkback on it after couple of years once Trump is out of office and in the meantime stop the republic of Azerbaijan from becoming a military base by the American and Israelis.

Assumptions that are tantamount to self-deception and treason.