Who is the new member of the U.S. National Security Council?

By Mohammad Ghaderi

TEHRAN - Richard Goldberg, a Grand Old Party foreign policy expert, is joining the White House's National Security Council as its new Director for Countering Iranian weapons of mass destruction. Earlier in the Obama era, he was the main designer and negotiator of the Congress on Iran's sanctions and resigned after concluding the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, JCPOA.

Goldberg, senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), was a Republican negotiator for the United States Senate for several rounds of congressional sanctions against Iran.
He also identified himself as one of the leading FDD ideologues in the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Among his prominent proposals, is to cut funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) which has already come into effect.

Who is Richard Goldberg?

Goldberg holds a Bachelor of Science in Journalism and Master's in Public Policy and Administration from Northwestern University. He is an officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve with prior service in Afghanistan. 

From 2004 to 2014, he worked on Capitol Hill, serving as deputy chief of staff and senior foreign policy adviser to former U.S. Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois. From 2015 to 2017, he served as deputy chief of staff for legislative affairs and later chief of staff for Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner. 

As a staff associate for the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State-Foreign Operations, Richard worked on a wide range of issues related to U.S. foreign assistance, including foreign military financing, international security assistance, international peacekeeping, development, global health and economic support funds. He was a founding staff director of the House U.S.-China Working Group and was among the first Americans ever to visit China’s human space launch center. A leader in efforts to expand U.S. missile defense cooperation with Israel, Richard played a key role in U.S. funding for the Arrow-3 program, Iron Dome and the deployment of an advanced missile defense radar to the Negev Desert.

In the Senate, Goldberg emerged as a leading architect of the toughest sanctions imposed on the Islamic Republic of Iran. He called on U.S. President Donald Trump to bring Iran's economy “to its knees.” He was the lead Republican negotiator for three rounds of sanctions targeting the Central Bank of Iran, the SWIFT financial messaging service, and entire sectors of the Iranian economy. Goldberg also drafted and negotiated legislation promoting human rights and democracy in Iran, including sanctions targeting entities that provide the Iranian government with the tools of repression. His Iran sanctions work was featured in the book The Iran Wars. 

As the governor’s chief of staff, Richard managed government in America’s fifth-largest state with oversight of all day-to-day operations, including homeland security, public safety, and public health. He also spearheaded the first-ever state legislation to divest public pension funds from companies engaged in boycotts of Israel, which sparked a nationwide initiative in state capitols around America.

Designing common plans with Israel against Iran

He threatens to the boycott of central European banks and the board of directors of SWIFT on charges of facilitating trade with Iran, with an emphasis on crazy theory. He undermines international obligations on Iran's nuclear deal and eliminates those who resist the U.S. sanctions on Iran. 
With the formation of the puzzle of the Tramp consultants, the unveiling of his main goal of his administration in confronting Iran has fallen since the heavy defeat of Washington in creating an international consensus against Iran. One of the main goals of Goldberg's membership since yesterday is to express a vague concern about Iran's nuclear program and create conditions for a possible war with the country.

In summer, Goldberg met with the Israel Interior Council's Jacob Nagel in which both sides agreed that the Trump administration should use sanctions power to target foreign governments as well as international agencies and their officials who have agreed to the JCPOA in order to reduce Iran's ability to develop nuclear weapons.

For example, Goldberg and Nagel said that foreign governments involved in rebuilding and reconstructing Iran’s nuclear reactor should also be targeted by the U.S. sanctions.   

In fact, the move will allow Washington to respond to the alleged mitigation of the risks of its proliferation by targeting foreign governments for its scientific cooperation with Iran.

That way, the White House can claim that foreign governments engaged in building Iran’s nuclear activity, such as the reconstruction of the Arak nuclear reactor, are engaged in activities that can effectively contribute to the risk or spread of weapons of mass destruction. 

International Atomic Energy Agency is the next target of sanctions

Financial and technological support, even in form of attempts to reduce Iran's capability of nuclear reactor, should be sanctioned and all assets of the parties involved in these activities will be subjected to U.S secondary sanctions.
Goldberg's next suggestion is that Washington should reduce the IAEA's budget if the Agency continues to provide technical assistance to Iran and host seminars and conferences in the country. 

However, according to the JCPOA, the IAEA is responsible to contribute to all types of cooperation and technical assistance projects in Iran. For example, the JCPOA requires a joint commission to support Iran for the IAEA's technical cooperation projects.  The Arak reactor modernization project includes significant international support from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Nuclear power will be.

However, Trump’s National Security Advisers have other agenda on mind which is not to limit Iran’s nuclear technology, nor to reduce the risks of developing nuclear weapons, but to pave the way for a war with Iran. Consequently, they have made an all-out-effort to undermine the nuclear accord and intensify international monitoring on Iran to achieve the objective.

It seems the U.S. is willing to impose sanctions even on its allies, and international organizations and agencies to attain malicious plan against Iran.

Challenging political maturity, illusion of unipolarism

‌
By Mehdi Honardoost*

In a world in which nations have learned from history how to solve their disputes through diplomacy and negotiations, we are witnessing bad omens of regressive trends toward political immaturity by non-diplomats who resort to unilateralism for imposing their own world order. These trends need more vigilance from those who have historically suffered the brunt of war, and from those who believe in the legacy of diplomacy and negotiation.

July 14, 2015 was an international milestone for the history of political negotiations, a determining time in which 10 years of the onerous task for settling an international dispute with peaceful means (in compliance with Article 2 of the UN Charter) came to the accepted result of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) between Iran, China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, United States, Germany and the European Union. The adoption of Resolution 2231 in the Security Council on July 20, 2015, which lifted all UN nuclear-related sanctions against Iran, evoked a new global optimism on the function of the UN and the Security Council in closing long-lasting hiatuses and peacefully resolving political stalemates. From that historic moment, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had regular access to all Iranian nuclear equipment and has numerous times reported Iran’s full compliance with its nuclear commitments.

The combination of international political rationality with an unprecedented “heroic flexibility” in foreign policy that occurred on July 14, 2015 could lead to a new successful pattern of constructive interaction for those other countries that bear a pessimistic attitude toward the international system. Unfortunately, this opportunity for international diplomacy was missed by the rise of a new administration on January 20, 2017 in the United States.

Assuming the illusion of unipolarism for the US, this new administration from the beginning resorted to international unilateralism and a bullying approach in enforcing economic benefits for the few, to the detriment of destroying historical political legacies of multilateralism and peaceful negotiation.

The US withdrawal from the JCPOA was not the only example of this unilateralism. Its exit from the Paris climate accord, the TransPacific Partnership (TPP), UNESCO, the UN Human Rights Council, and most catastrophically, the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital are other examples of the list that should be seriously considered by those who have responsibilities for the future of peace and tranquility in international relations. The silence of the international community toward this unilateralism will create a schism between states and increase pessimism toward international organizations.

The arbitrary withdrawal by the US president from an international agreement was not related to Iran’s compliance with its commitments, but to the unilateral policies of a non-diplomat who didn’t have much knowledge of the four decades of resistance and defiance of a nation toward foreign pressures. What the Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in 2015 called “heroic flexibility” was an unprecedented permission for kicking off a new round of confidence building with an arch foe, and a genuine gesture toward the international community that Iran is ready for dialogue. This opportunity should have been seized by top negotiators of the JCPOA, not as a big challenge that needed to be passed. For a nation that had successfully spent eight years of an asymmetric war (1980-1988) with a coalition and undergone decades of sanctions and difficulties, this “heroic flexibility” was a political evaluation – an evaluation that could have resulted in confidence building and the trust of a nation toward the main actors of the international system, which could have begun a new era of constructive interaction between the parties.

In analyzing the main reasons of the US withdrawal from the JCPOA, aside from political variables, the economic ones should also be considered. When Resolution 2231 passed by consensus in the UNSC and nuclear sanctions were lifted, Iran earnestly stopped the activities of many of its nuclear power plants and changed the function of some others in compliance with the agreement. Consequently, Iran’s economic interactions restarted with the world and obstacles in economic relations began to be removed.

The JCPOA opened Iran’s large market to the world and facilitated the easy export of gas and oil to countries that are economically considered to be US rivals. The JCPOA accelerated the rise of new powers in the world, those who could surpass the present position of the US. This was intolerable for a businessman who was now on the political saddle in the US. Therefore, regardless of the consequences of his actions, the US president needed to do something to reverse the situation.

The US withdrawal from the JCPOA was more a damage to the legacy of multilateralism and negotiations than a danger to a country that has undergone 40 years of resistance. Iran has successfully learned the lessons of cohesion and resilience, but has the international community learned how to resist unilateralism and save its legacy of cooperation that are mentioned in the UN Charter?

*Mehdi Honardoost is the ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Iran to Pakistan.