American negotiators, writes Michael Rubin, ought to pay more attention to the Iranian government’s canny employment of dates and gestures. Take, for example, last week’s extension of the deadline for the nuclear talks, which almost led to a partial agreement being announced today:
Ever since the victory of the [1979] Islamic revolution, the Iranian government has commemorated the fourth Friday in Ramadan—this year on July 10—as Qods Day, a commemoration that is usually marked with the most vile anti-Israel and anti-American rhetoric. It was on Qods Day back in 2001, for example, that former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani suggested Iran should use a nuclear weapon against Israel because it would wipe Israel out while Iran’s large size would allow it to absorb any retaliation. To announce a deal on Qods Day that effectively blesses a full-scale Iranian nuclear program and will allow Iran to break out and build not a bomb but an arsenal after as little as a decade will be the ultimate humiliation to the United States, and will be spun by the Iranian regime as the start of the countdown to the fulfillment of its promise to enable Israel’s ultimate destruction.
That Iran always manages to maximize such symbolism is no coincidence. It not only shows that reconciliation isn’t a goal for Tehran, but it also indicates the extent to which Iranian officials have been running circles around their American counterparts.
More about: Iran nuclear program, Iranian Revolution, Politics & Current Affairs, U.S. Foreign policy