Hawkish Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and his visiting Venezuelan counterpart Nicolas Maduro signed a 20-year partnership agreement last week to boost cooperation in energy, economy, tourism, culture and politics. After signing the deal, Raisi said Iran has always tried to have ties with “independent countries” and that “Venezuela’s resistance against imperialism and enemies was exemplary”. The remark is very symbolic as it binds the Shia nation from West Asia to a South American country as both are targets of stringent economic sanctions from the US and the West. And, their coming together and signing a historic deal is well understood. Raisi reiterated that Iran “has decided to leverage” sanctions imposed on it and convert them into “improvement opportunities for the country”. Iran is battling with its arch rivals, mostly the Sunni nations in the region like the UAE, Saudi Arabia etc which are maintaining long-term ties with the US. Therefore, Tehran is under constant pressure from both within and outside to champion the cause of the Shia nations and at the same time to counter massive economic sanctions so as to prevent the nation from driving towards a complete economic showdown.
Ostracised by the West, both Venezuela and Iran have found common ground to develop a stronger bilateral partnership. Economic and political relations have grown stronger between Tehran and Caracas despite continued US pressure to prevent the same.
Why has the US imposed sanctions against Venezuela and Iran? For over a decade and a half, the US has been persecuting Venezuela with stringent sanctions. The earliest sanctions imposed against Caracas were related to its lack of complete cooperation on anti-drug and counter-terrorism efforts. When Barack Obama was in power from 2009-17, he issued targeted sanctions against individuals for human rights abuses, corruption and anti-democratic initiatives. When Donald Trump came to power in 2017, he immediately expanded economic sanctions in response to increasing authoritarianism of Maduro over the years. Further, the Trump administration quickly recognised Juan Guaido, President of the democratically elected National Assembly, as interim President. Interestingly, along with the US, many other western governments projected Guaido as the country’s rightful head of the state, decrying Maduro’s constant attempt to crush democratic movements in the country. The Trump administration tightened sanctions against Venezuela’s state oil company Pteroleos de Venezuela, SA or in short PdVSA, the Central Bank and the Government. In fact, Trump threatened to sanction any company that works with the Maduro administration. Thus, Washington ratcheted up its bid to dethrone Maduro, who has been in power since 2013.
Maduro by all probabilities should have fallen by now. But being in power for almost nine years now, he has mastered the art of survival. In all these years, he had to encounter vehement protests from the Opposition, a section of military, media, civil society, international organisations and foreign nations. He has presided over one of the most devastating economic crises witnessed anywhere in the globe. His public approval ratings have sagged consistently while the oppositions have surged otherwise dramatically (the best instance being the result of the National Assembly election in 2015). Venezuela’s journey to an autocratic system of governance started under its late President Hugo Chavez more than two decades ago. And this process has hardened under the leadership of Maduro as he was designated by Chavez as his successor. Political pundits say that by all world standards, Maduro’s model of governance was a unique and an unusual case of democratic backsliding.. Its “Function fusion”, as Corrales (2020) rightly says “granting the existing institutions the ability to perform a variety of functions traditionally reserved for other institutions”, gives unbridled power to the President to save his position. This is what has made Maduro fail all the attempts of the opposition forces to stay in power till date.
When it comes to Iran, the US has a long history of sanctions against Iran. For decades, it has been considered crucial by the US in its direct response to a series of the alleged evil actions by the radical elements and hardline governments in Iran. For the first time, the US imposed sanctions against Iran in the early 1980s in response to the country’s active support to terrorism and extremism. From 1995, these measures were expanded against Tehran’s continued support to terrorism and weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The sanctions included a full-fledged embargo on bilateral trade through the EO 12957 and 12959 signed by then President Bill Clinton. A year later in 1996, sanctions were imposed to isolate Iran from the non-US energy companies. Thus, a new idea of “secondary sanction” surfaced differentiating them from the primary sanctions that directly target the US trade with a foreign country. The secondary sanctions normally target the non-US citizens or entities from engaging with trade with another foreign nation.
The signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), popularly known as the Iran Nuclear Deal, on July 14, 2015 between the US, Iran and other five countries was a historic step by the Obama administration. The primary aim of the agreement was to curb Tehran’s nuclear programme. Then Iran called the deal a “major step forward”, while the US hailed it a step towards a “more hopeful” and “safer world”. Moreover, the Islamic republic was more hopeful of bringing an end to the punishing sanctions against the country. But just after four years in 2018, President Trump withdrew from the JCPOA calling it “one-sided” and “horrible” and “defective to its core”. Today, Iran’s economy is in crisis. Many in Iran fear that the hawks in the US are trying to provoke a bitter conflict between the two nations.
The latest classified briefing organised by the Biden administration for Senators assured that Washington would ram up sanctions against Iran in the coming days. The reason seems to be the fleeting hope to revive the JCPOA. Hopes are really dim for a diplomatic pathway on Iran’s fast expanding nuclear programme. These assurances come at a time when lawmakers from both the Republican and Democratic parties forced the Biden regime to articulate a back-up plan that could prevent Islamic Republic of Iran from joining the world’s elite club of nuclear powers. For now, there are no talks. It is clear that existing sanctions against Iran would be maintained. But the Senators who attended the briefing put forward a range of possible next steps starting from a diplomatic solution to new punitive measures and finally huddling with new partners in West Asia.
Meanwhile Biden has revealed that he will be visiting Saudi Arabia and Israel in the next month to reassure its commitment to its allies in the region. In fact, his visit is not only a reaffirmation of Washington’s alignment with its partners in the sensitive region but also to specifically display its “ironclad” commitment to Israel’s security.
Now the question is whether the US and the rest of the West can achieve their strategic goals by unleashing punitive sanctions against Venezuela and Iran. Definitely, the answer is a big no. As the punitive measures go on increasing on Iran and Venezuela, their civilians’ suffering is increasing. However, the principal aim of the western sanctions is to reverse the course of actions in both these countries along with many others in the world. Instead of pressurising for a regime change or trying to bring liberal governments in such countries, the global governance system must see to it that such governments follow a rule-based international order. And for the current regimes in Caracas and Teheran, it is wiser not to bring hardship to their own people through their immediate actions simply by whipping an anti-western or an anti-American agenda. Such populist narratives are neither helpful for their countrymen nor for the international community. The bottom line is to maintain peace and equilibrium and not to invite chaos like the one imposed by Russia over Ukraine. Hope, continued camaraderie between Venezuela and Iran would not form another “axis of evil” to challenge the current tumultuous power calculus in the world, already threatened by Vladimir Putin and also possible aggressions from Xi Jinping in the days to come.
(Dr Makhan Saikia has taught political science and international relations for over a decade in institutions of national and international repute after specialisation in globalisation and governance from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. He is the chief editor of the Journal of Global Studies, an international research journal)
