An independent view

Seyed M. S. Emamian
Assistant Professor at AmirKabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic)
Founding Partner of Governance and Policy Think Tank (GPTT)

Background:
– The end of temporary honeymoon era: After JCPOA promising era, EU-Iran relation was initially affected by the Trump’s withdrawal from the Agreement and the EU’s incompetency in safeguarding Iran’s proportional gain out of it afterwards, despite a few instances of honest and rather successful efforts like rejecting president Trump’s call for snap back.
– Securitization: the relation then has severely deteriorated in post Russian war on Ukraine, by constantly accusing Iran-Russia relationship as threat to the European security. The war turned the fluctuating political relation to a heavily securitized threat perception..
– Violating traditional red-lines: the way that EU also reacted to the fall 2022 riots was widely conceived in Tehran as highly disproportionate and unjustified.
– Threatening sovereignty: Even worse, the EU’s unprecedented joint statement with GCC was publicly understood in Tehran as a threat to national sovereignty.
– ⁠Even more concerning for Tehran was the practical interference of a few European countries in militarily defending Israeli space from the Iranian legitimate “True Promise” operation. It was literally conceived against the Iran’s fundamental right of self-defence.
– The risk of irreversibility: as far as I’ve understood from the lens of Iranian policymakers, it might reach simply to an irreversible point if the European bill for calling IRGC a terrorist organization was passed by the EU authorities. It seems that there is a clear proposal discussed to possibly end up the voluntary ban on the Iranian missile reach beyond 2000 km; the ban that has been in place only to respect the European concern.
– Symbolic aggressions: The most recent challenging move came out of a set of aggressive sanctions by EU on IranAir and Iran’s National Shipping Company, as a sign of an emerging EU-US competition for imposing more sanction on Iran.

Back to Normal: An Intellectual Controversy
– Since then, the prospect of Iran-EU relations has been seen as an extremely controversial foreign policy issue amongst the intellectual community in Tehran.
– A classical tradition: There is a prominent pro-EU political coalition, mainly based in MoFA and currently at FM Javad Zarif’s CSS at the heart of Government, framing the relations as historical and symbolic, as well as an organic alternative to the Iran-US lack of political relation for several decades.
– Power decline and the lack of independence: On the other hand, a growing group of politicians, think tankers and academics who deprioritize the relationship, due to the EU’s declining economic and political prominence. It seems that Critics are getting more and more disappointed from EU’s independent political identity and foreign policy anymore.
– The return of Trump era: Such a weakening prospect is more likely to get reinforced by both the Trump’s anti-EU and anti-NATO stance.
– An opposition-led policy: Critics also point in the rising influence of the political opposition groups within the Iranian diaspora in Europe, framing the EU’s policies towards Iran from an ideologically biased and so-called “irrelevant to the realities in the ground” perspective that could block any prospect of “backing to normal”.
– A challenging prospect: Overall, there is a growing suspicion in Iran about the strategic significance, relevance, and the political feasibility of the likely revival of Iran-EU relationship, under current geopolitical circumstances.

Moving Beyond Diplomatic Lock-in:
– From an independent point of view, GPTT is keen to highlight a few still open windows of opportunities for reviving the relations.
– Trump’s anti-EU and anti-Iran convergence: with the prospect of an isolationist foreign policy, Trump’s likely hostile approach towards EU and his Iran’s Maximum Pressure policy, though with categorically different meanings and scale; might provide an inevitable context for political exchanges and interactions. It surely rests on the hand of Europeans to what extent they are to differentiate and distance themselves from the likely Trump’s hostile policies.
– Of course there is also a few optimistic possibilities for conflict mitigation, in the case of either Iran and US direct talk and a form of deal or putting an end to Russia-Ukraine war too.
– EU’s partial normative tradition manifested in its ethical stance on Gaza: having conceived some EU member states, like Germany, as the most Israel First governments almost preoccupied by the Zionist lobby; there are other member states that have portrayed a comparatively moral and pro-Palestinian stances, particularly those who officially recognized the state of Palestine like Ireland, Norway and Spain.
– The return of terrorism: following continuous genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza in light of international inaction, this is now more likely in the Middle East to expect a new wave of radicalization leading to regional and international consequences including, though not limited to, another mass refugee crisis in Europe. Iran and EU might conduct a set of joint collaborations to contain such an inevitable side effects.
– Intellectual diplomacy: last but not least, EU-Iran relation has been locked behind diplomatic closed doors. Enhancing a more diverse and multi stakeholder society-to-society interaction could create a set of unofficial platforms for mutual understanding and exchanges. Having coined as intellectual diplomacy by GPTT, it encourages both Iran and EU to open up the door for think tankers, academics and public intellectuals to get in touch and to conduct their constructive dialogues.