Tehran’s ‘red lines’ have changed – Iranian professor

The US should not expect Tehran to enter negotiations while enforcing its blockade, Prof Elham Kadkhodaee has told RT India

Iran’s “red lines” on restarting the talks to end the Middle East conflict with the US have changed, a leading expert in Tehran has said.

The Americans were trying to provoke a kind of violent insurrection among Iranians, Prof. Elham Kadkhodaee of Tehran University told RT India in an exclusive interview on Wednesday.

“Iran’s red lines in terms of its capability and its will to use its military power have changed. Tehran now controls the Strait of Hormuz,” she added.

“What the Iranians are saying right now is that we, whatever situation we have right now, it’s not going to go back to that status quo,” Kadkhodaee said before a planned second round of talks in Islamabad was postponed.

The status quo was one in which we were under extreme economic sanctions,” she noted.

Kadkhodaee, an assistant professor of West Asian Studies at the University of Tehran, said the Iran and the US have entirely different ideas of what a deal would look like.

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Trump expects Iran to be intimidated into accepting an agreement that is more of a surrender, which is what the Iranians “are not willing to accept,” Kadkhodaee said. 

Iran has experienced decades of sanctions, war, and backtracking by the US on its promises, she added, saying that “all of this has not been very much constructive in terms of convincing the Iranians that negotiations… are going to be productive.”

Kadkhodaee noted that ahead of the first round of Islamabad talks, the Iranian delegation postponed their flight several times because “they were expecting the Americans to actually follow through [on] some of the promises.” 
The professor said she expects Iran to be “much more pessimistic” this time.

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Terming the US blockade as an act of war and a war crime, she asked, “So how would the Americans expect Iran to enter talks?”

The US wants Iran to forego its right to nuclear enrichment, which is an insult to any nation’s sovereignty, “especially when you are a member of the NPT, especially when you have declared  that you do not seek a military nuclear program,” Kadkhodaee said.