Pause in hostilities benefits both Washington and Tehran: Irina Fedorova

Irina Fedorova, PhD in History and expert at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, commented to Alpha News on the situation around Iran.

“I think that, of course, at the moment negotiations aren’t taking place. But Trump has announced that talks will happen today and tomorrow. I think it’s more likely a matter of contacts rather than negotiations between the Iranian and American sides, and these would go through intermediaries, either Pakistani diplomats or Qatari diplomats.

So it’s very hard to say how this will develop further. It seems to me that if these contacts intensify and move into the stage of negotiations, it will be a very lengthy process, aimed, on both the Iranian and the US side, primarily at maintaining the pause in hostilities and reaching some kind of agreement.

It’s no coincidence that Trump said no timeline has been set for reaching an agreement. This process will be geared toward a prolonged pause, because the two sides hold directly opposing positions on a number of very important issues, including Iran’s support for proxies in the region, the unfreezing of assets, Iran’s nuclear program, and so on. So this kind of pause benefits both the United States and Iran,” Fedorova said.