The memorandum of misunderstanding

If the American-Iranian memorandum of understanding is worthy of the name it was given, why is this happening? Why does the US continue its punitive strikes on targets in Iran in response to the latter’s attacks on ships attempting to cross the Strait of Hormuz? Why does Iran continue its assaults on the Gulf Cooperation Council states (including those that mediated and encouraged settlements, like Qatar and Oman)? And if Tehran considers the memorandum a victory, why would it risk its collapse under the weight of exchanged blows?
The memorandum of understanding generated some hasty hopes. Some believed the region had escaped the trap of sliding into a chapter more destructive than the one it had witnessed. Others imagined that Iran had survived open confrontation with America and would now turn to obtaining the long-awaited funds its exhausted economy needs.
Still others overshot and wondered when American companies would come streaming into Iran. However, the developments of recent days suggest that optimism on that score was hasty and that the dispute between Washington and Tehran is too deep and acrimonious to end with an agreement riddled with ambiguity and equivocation.
In Baghdad, I heard words that gave me pause. It was said that the conditions for a grand bargain are not there and that the current Iranian regime dreads returning to being a normal state. By a normal state, he meant a state that abides by international law in dealing not only with the Strait of Hormuz but with its neighbors and the entire world. A normal state does not fight wars by proxy. It does not raise small armies inside its neighbors’ territories.
I also heard it said that the Iranian regime was born carrying a mission written into its constitution: “exporting the revolution” to change the region and the Islamic world. He noted that Iran’s retreat into its own borders leaves the revolution waiting for a man to reconcile it with the age and the world, as Deng Xiaoping did with the Chinese revolution and the legacy of Mao Zedong. The other option is to await the appearance of Iran’s Mikhail Gorbachev, who opens the door to collapse on the model of what befell the Soviet Union. The issue, he reckoned, is that today’s Iran does not want to change and cannot change. It has produced no Deng and it will not allow for the emergence of an Iranian Gorbachev.
The ink of the memorandum does not change the choices of those who signed it. Donald Trump wasted no time hinting that he would wash his hands of the memorandum in response to Iran’s actions in Hormuz. Iran, for its part, demands the implementation of the agreement’s clauses (but according to its own reading, which tries to tame the ambiguities and press them into the service of its policy).
Iran behaves as though it emerged from the clash with America and Israel, which holds the title of the region’s great power. It cites its clash with the US as a pretext for shelling its neighbors, punishing them for hosting an American military presence or for defense and security agreements with Washington. Iran gave itself license to garrison the territory of other states without their governments’ approval, while denying neighboring states the right to conclude agreements whose necessity Iran’s own conduct, past and present, has helped confirm. Iran behaves as though gripping the world economy by the throat at Hormuz could become the engine of its transformation into the region’s great power, after that transformation proved beyond reach under the umbrella of the nuclear project.
The message of Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei after his father's funeral rites was clear and severe. He vowed categorically to avenge his father. He wrote: “These criminals, of whose names there exists a complete list from the first of them to the last, will carry with them to their graves the wish of dying a peaceful death in their beds.” He also said: “Soon, individuals from among the free people of the world will each carry out a part of this divine mission,” meaning the vengeance.
The supreme leader’s abstention from appearing even at his father’s funeral shows that Iran does not rule out new chapters of military confrontation. No one expected Khamenei’s words after burying his father to be moderate. Nonetheless, the insistence on vengeance, and in this form, suggests that the memorandum of understanding is surrounded by mines — and not only those said to have been planted in the waters of the strait.

Iran’s insistence on vengeance suggests that the memorandum of understanding is surrounded by mines.

Ghassan Charbel

From Baghdad to Beirut, visiting journalists sense that the memorandum of understanding has done nothing to turn the page on the confrontation. The US presses on with its policy of cutting the Iranian thread that lets Tehran move certain Iraqi factions in the region’s wars and keeps the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel in south Lebanon renewable.
Iran, in turn, presses on with its traditional policy of cutting the American thread it believes lies behind Arab states’ refusal to bow to its dictates on the region’s security and its decisions.
Was the American-Iranian memorandum of understanding merely an attempt to avert a tunnel of vast destruction? Was it dictated by energy prices, Trump’s relationship with Congress and the approach of the midterm elections? Was it dictated, on the Iranian side, by fear of the costly destruction of bridges and power stations, which Trump had threatened more than once? The memorandum of understanding emerged as a solution, a way out and an attempt to rescue the region from a great catastrophe. Does it now need saving?
The pessimists say diplomacy sprinkles sugar over death. It plays for time. It invents unwarranted hope. And they say the memorandum of understanding is fragile and ambiguous and overlooked many clauses, which nominates it for the title of memorandum of misunderstanding.

• Ghassan Charbel is editor-in-chief of Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper. X: @GhasanCharbel — This article first appeared in Asharq Al-Awsat.