‘JCPOA Violation to Have Little Impact on Iran’s Economy’

Senior parliamentarian Hassan Hosseini Shahroudi has, in an article published in the Persian-language Tejarat daily, explained what effects Washington’s contravention of the Iran nuclear deal with six world powers known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) will have on Iran’s economy. The highlights of the analytical piece follow.

What is important is to find out whether or not Iran will be as much affected by Washington’s violation of the JCPOA as Trump and US Congress claim Iran will. First, the economic systems of the US and Europe are extremely interdependent. If the JCPOA is scuttled for whatever reason, it will affect Iran-Europe relations. Although European countries have, so far, condemned Trump and Congress’s breach of promises and have underlined the necessity of remaining committed to the Iran nuclear deal, we cannot very much trust Europe’s words if the US questions the JCPOA. The reason is that the Europeans have, on numerous occasions, obeyed the Americans in the past and reneged on their agreements with Iran.

Another point is to see how Iran’s banking relations with the world will be affected by the violation of the JCPOA. Even now, the nuclear deal has played almost no role in improving Iran’s banking relations with other countries, and if we are realistic, the JCPOA’s impact on the amelioration of Iran’s banking relations has been less than 5%. This is a reality that the governor of the central bank of Iran, the country’s economic officials and even the foreign minister have stressed. So, Trump should know that the JCPOA has had no influence on Iran’s banking and monetary ties with other countries, and Washington’s breach of commitments under the nuclear deal will have little bearing on Iran’s baking relations with the world.

Therefore, and as Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has underscored, Iran has been looking for a replacement because it has no trust in the US and its allies. Iran’s policy is to reach self-sufficiency and get rid of dependence in different shapes and forms. That is why Iran opted for alternative policies and strengthened its relations with such countries as Russia and China, which, under the current circumstances, are more committed to their obligations. They are not under US pressure, either. On the other hand, Iran’s trade has been shifting from transactions in dollars and other common European currencies to a barter economy.

We have tried to identify countries which need Iranian products and begun trading goods with them. Of course, there is no denying that Iran needs foreign exchange as well. Therefore, we changed our forex transactions from the greenback to the currencies of the countries with which we have trade. For instance, we have now defined a mutual monetary relationship with Turkey, India, China, Russia and other countries, and we have removed global currencies from our forex transactions with many countries. So, we can see that the removal of the JCPOA will have no bearing on Iran’s economy, and because Iran purchases goods from other countries, the removal of the nuclear deal will be more detrimental to those countries.