UNGA chance for Iran’s public diplomacy
Sideline talks in New York unlikely to deliver major breakthrough
President Masoud Pezeshkian and senior officials are heading to New York to attend the annual UN General Assembly meeting this week, a gathering that comes at a time of heightened tensions between Iran and the West over the nuclear file. The session follows the 12-day war waged by Israel against Iran in June, during which the United States also struck Iranian nuclear facilities. In the aftermath, the European trio—France, Germany and the United Kingdom—moved to trigger the return of UN sanctions against Iran. With the Security Council on Friday rejecting a resolution to extend sanctions relief, the likelihood of sanctions snapping back at the end of the 30-day deadline on September 28 has grown.
Against this backdrop, and amid reports of a possible meeting between Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and European officials on the sidelines of the event, some observers see the Assembly as an opportunity to keep diplomacy alive and dial down tensions.
Iran Daily spoke with Afifeh Abedi, an expert on international affairs, for her take on the issue.
IRAN DAILY: To what extent can the UN General Assembly be viewed as a genuine opportunity for Iran to ease tensions and avert the full return of sanctions? Does the diplomatic arena still offer room for bargaining?
ABEDI: The attendance of Iran’s president and foreign minister at the General Assembly provides a valuable chance to keep diplomacy alive. Yet caution is needed in defining whether such diplomacy will actually ease tensions. The main stumbling block is the absence of genuine political will from the United States and the European troika to reduce hostilities with Iran. It should be recalled that the Tehran-IAEA agreement reached in Cairo [earlier in September] created a real window to ease tensions and return to diplomacy after the 12-day US-Israeli war against Iran. But Europe’s disregard for this major Iranian confidence-building step effectively stripped the Cairo accord of credibility.
Against this backdrop, sidebar talks in New York should not be expected to deliver a major leap, although the possibility of fresh initiatives surfacing at that level cannot be ruled out. Overall, Iran’s participation in the General Assembly functions more as an instrument of public diplomacy— an opportunity to articulate its stances on US and European nuclear nitpicking, and to lodge protests against Washington’s and Tel Aviv’s unlawful strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
The diplomatic space still allows for bargaining, though more narrowly and under harsher conditions than in the past. The direct US involvement in Israel’s military assault on Iran—backed and even facilitated by European powers—has eroded Tehran’s trust in the West. Europe’s handling of the Cairo agreement compounded that distrust and left Iran convinced that Europe’s true intent in the nuclear file is more about obstruction and even paving the way for triggering snapback of sanctions than cooperation.
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