Iran and United States, Islamabad memorandum expires without negotiation

The document signed in Islamabad set a sixty-day timeframe. That time runs out on Monday, and it runs out in the worst possible way: without the parties having implemented the terms they had signed. The memorandum of understanding between Iran and the United States committed the two capitals to open negotiations on three files — the Iranian nuclear programme, sanctions, the security of shipping — and none of the three tables was ever set.

On the very nature of the deadline the two sides do not agree. Washington reads it as the final term of the ceasefire: once past that, the agreement no longer produces effects. Tehran instead maintains that the understanding concerned the end of the war and not a time-bound truce, and therefore that nothing is expiring at all. This is not a semantic dispute: on which reading prevails depends whether what happens from Tuesday is a new phase or a resumption of hostilities never formally concluded.

Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said Saturday that Tehran has not yet decided whether to return to the table with the United States. He added that Qatar and Pakistan continue to pass messages between the parties, specifying however that this exchange does not amount to negotiations under way. This is the decisive distinction: a channel exists, a negotiation does not.

“no 60-day truce” (transl. from English) — Abbas Araghchi, Iranian foreign minister

On August 12 Middle East Monitor had reported, citing an anonymous source close to the mediation, that the two parties had let the mediators know they were willing to push the deadline forward: “Both sides have communicated to the mediators their consent to extend the deadline” (transl. from English). That report, never attributed to an identifiable source, found no confirmation in the developments of August 16. It must be recorded as such: an anonymous account not borne out by subsequent facts.

On the ground, meanwhile, the picture has hardened. Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz again, citing as justification what it describes as a US attempt to establish an alternative shipping route. The United States responded by reinstating the naval blockade in the area. On Sunday the General Staff of Iran’s Armed Forces declared it will not back down in the confrontation with Washington.

There is, however, one channel that, according to Araghchi, remains separate: the one with Oman. It concerns maritime borders and the regulation of traffic in the Strait, and the minister insists on keeping it distinct from the dialogue — nonexistent — with the United States. It is the only technical table that appears active, and it concerns exactly the matter at the heart of the crisis: who passes through Hormuz, under what rules, under whose authority.

On the rhetoric of war, Iranian state television and the Tasnim news agency reported that Hatami is said to have announced a reward of $30,000 for every Iranian fighter who captures or kills a US soldier. The information, picked up by Daily News Egypt, comes from outlets controlled by or close to the Iranian state and must be treated for what it is: an attributed statement, not an independently verified fact. It is nonetheless worth noting its political import, since it is the kind of announcement made when a decision has already been taken not to negotiate any time soon.

The chairman of the Iranian parliament’s National Security Committee, Ebrahim Azizi, spoke in the same hours in terms of personal threat directed at the American counterpart; the wording reported by sources is too fragmentary to be quoted verbatim.

What remains, at the deadline, is a bare list: no direct negotiation between Tehran and Washington, two mediators — Qatar and Pakistan — conveying messages without a negotiating mandate, a technical table with Oman on maritime traffic and borders, the Strait of Hormuz closed by Iranian decision and a US naval blockade operational once again. The Islamabad memorandum exits the stage without having produced a single round of talks.

Sources: The New Arab; Daily News Egypt — which cites Iranian state television and the Tasnim news agency (Iranian media outlets); Middle East Monitor.