June 17, 2012

Since that date, the American and Iranian sides have only exchanged statements through the media, through a third party, or through meetings of what is known as “Track 2” i.e. dialogues that bring together unofficial representatives of both Americans and Iranians, and the most prominent of these meetings is what happened after the September attacks 2001, the two sides met in semi-regular meetings that lasted until May 2003. In addition, Iran and the United States are members of the 6 + 2 group of countries that focused on the Afghan issue after the collapse of the Taliban government, as the two countries worked side by side throughout the period that followed the collapse Taliban government.

With regard to the current talks, it was confirmed by both parties that the agenda of the negotiations contains only the issue of Iraq. The United States of America submitted a request to conduct negotiations with Tehran through the Swiss embassy, ​​which sponsors American interests in Iran. Tehran hastened to agree. How could it not, which did not object to conducting such negotiations if the United States asked it to do so, which is what happened according to the Iranian narrative.

Negotiations are taking place in the shadow of a number of important developments. In Iran, the Iranian-American academic Haleh Esfandiar, who serves as the head of the Middle East program at the Wooder Wilson International Center for Scholars, was arrested, and the academic Esfandiar, who is being held in Evin Prison in Tehran, is detained on grounds of threatening national security. These negotiations are taking place in the atmosphere of the new budget proposed by The US Department of State to Support Democracy in Iran, estimated at about $109 million. It is also referred to the American reports that talk about a secret Iranian plan aimed at forcing American forces to leave Iraq by increasing support for Sunni and Shiite militias, focusing on the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr, in order to intensify military operations in the summer of 2007, and the focus comes on the Mahdi Army to exploit the anger that it Muwaffaq al-Rubaie, the Iraqi national security advisor, left him saying that the United States had sought and planned to get rid of Muqtada al-Sadr in 2004.

In this analysis, which deals with the upcoming Iranian-American talks, we will focus on three main axes:

First: the timing of these talks, in other words, why now?

Second: the political scene and talks with Washington.

Third: The Middle East in the Washington-Tehran talks