The US and Iran are interested in maintaining the ceasefire: Irina Fedorova

Irina Fedorova, senior research fellow at the Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, commented to Alpha News on the prospects of an agreement between the US and Iran.

“I think that at the moment the positions of the parties, I mean Washington and Tehran, are quite opposed, so it is difficult to say what concessions Iran is prepared to make. This is connected to the fact that it is in a very difficult economic situation, and of course the war has had a sharp impact on the further decline of the rial, which was already falling, as well as on unemployment levels, because many people lost their jobs due to strikes on critical infrastructure and civilian facilities. This of course creates very serious pressure on the country’s government, which is forced to reckon with the dire situation in which the people of Iran now find themselves. On the other hand, the US also faces a difficult domestic political situation, as the Democrats are putting serious pressure on the US president and on the Republican Party as a whole. So, based on these premises, both sides are of course interested in resolving the situation in US-Iranian relations,” Fedorova said.

According to the Middle East scholar, the negotiation process will be lengthy and extremely complex.

“The demands Iran is putting forward are quite sweeping and in many respects contradict what the US is currently prepared to accept. So in any case the negotiation process will continue, since both sides are now interested in ending military hostilities, which in practice have led nowhere for the US either. But on the other hand, this process could be very difficult and will be further complicated by the domestic political situation in Iran, I mean certain divisions within the Iranian elite over the question of how relations with the US and the West as a whole should develop going forward,” Fedorova concluded.