Iranian foreign minister’s last letter to Secretary-General of the United Nations Antonio Guterres has been released in the form of a 200-page book.
The book is titled “Letter to the UN Secretary-General: Documenting Six Years of Western [Non-] Implementation of the ‘Iran Nuclear Deal’”.
“On the occasion of the sixth anniversary of the unanimous adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 2231 (2015), I wrote a summarizing letter to the UN Secretary-General and annexed to it an issue-based compilation of the aforementioned letters. This book is comprised of that letter and its annexes, which are being circulated, as I write this preface, as documents of the General Assembly (A/75/968) and of the Security Council (S/2021/669)," Zarif said.
In the course of the last 6 years, following the conclusion of the JCPOA in Vienna and the subsequent unanimous adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 2231 on 20 July 2015 in New York, the Iranian negotiating team has faced huge challenges both at home and abroad.
These six years have certainly been an uphill battle for me—as a student and practitioner of international law and policy for over four decades—to keep faith in diplomacy, multilateralism and the rule of law.
I have tried to document this personal, professional, national and global ordeal in the form of the letters I sent to the two consecutive High Representatives of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy; Federica Mogherini and Josep Borrell Fontelles, who also served as Coordinators of the JCPOA Joint Commission—only one of the innovations of the accord to ensure mutual compliance. I also wrote letters—at critical points—to the Secretary-General of the United Nations and the President of the Security Council, which are also included here, Iranian Foreign Minister says.
“My letters are self-explanatory, representing a chronology of implementation issues, which started long before Trump took office in January 2017. The letters substantiate every assertion that has been made, but I do not claim to present the whole story. I am confident that my domestic and international detractors will find much to disagree with and criticize in this book—which is being published in English and Persian simultaneously for transparency, and ease of reference," he added.
Zarif went on to say that "yet I can make one categorical statement: None of my letters to the Coordinator of the JCPOA Joint Commission, all of which were distributed to every JCPOA Participant, were ever rebutted by any one of them".
"This may be the result of either having nothing legal or logical to say in response at the time of each letter—particularly as I was only stating self-evident facts in each instance,” he added.
Zarif in his letter to Secretary-General of the United Nations Antonio Guterres says that " As I prepare to leave office and devote my time fully to teaching and research, I continue to stay hopeful that logic and prudence will finally prevail in the world.
The world has tremendously changed in not just my lifetime or during my tenure as foreign minister, but even in the last year. COVID-19 has laid bare the utter impotence of the most powerful. It has also demonstrated the inevitability of our common destiny as well as the unsurpassed power of global empathy, synergy and cooperation. In our globalized world, in which a microscopic virus can spread over the entire planet in mere days and keep all of humankind hostage for what is now already 18 months—and unfortunately with many more months to come—we need to finally recognize that we are all in the same boat. We can either sail together or sink together.
No longer can any one nation advance at the expense of others. I had hoped that the tragedy of 9/11 had proven to all of us that even the mightiest nation cannot be safe, stable, and secure in a world of instability and insecurity. But unfortunately, old habits die hard. Cognitive change has been more difficult to achieve than many of us had hoped".
My aspiration is that the Iran nuclear deal and the history of its [non-] implementation—as partly outlined in this book of first-hand documents—will teach an important lesson: that maximalist positions will lead to failure, for all. There are no perfect deals or arrangements.
No one will get everything they want in any negotiation. And no one should even want to; for in today’s world any such arrangement will be as unsustainable as it is untenable. The lost opportunities caused by adopting maximalist positions almost always outweigh any possible gain. In truth, a zero-sum approach to international affairs is no longer tenable and always leads to negative-sum outcomes.
To succeed—even with the most self-centered approach—one must recognize, respect, and address the concerns, anxieties, and interests of other sides. I believe that a sober and objective study of the successful conclusion of the JCPOA—compared with its problematic implementation—can provide instructive and illuminating conclusions for 21st - century statecraft. Let us hope that we will learn from our successes—as well as our failures.
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