Any chance you can give us a quick synopsis on that segment? .
What do you think that he was meaning by "You went and carried through something else [than what you negotiated]"?
In the snippets that are featured in the video, Abbas Abdi starts off by challenging the MP's of the newly elected Parliament (which has a strong principlist / revolutionary majority), daring them to block whatever agreement might result from the ongoing talks in Vienna.
He then says that the previous Parliament, which famously approved the JCPOA after a session lasting only 20 minutes, had a principlist majority as well (don't know to what extent this is correct), and that the deal was then validated by the Guardian Council, adding: "What are you talking about when you say you oppose [the JCPOA]? If it wasn't for the JCPOA, you wouldn't even find any water to drink. On this point, Rohani is right."
Followed by: "All you're saying is, why did the JCPOA fail? It has its own specific reasons, which can be discussed indeed. But look at the state of the country before the JCPOA took shape. We had a negative growth rate of 6-7%, we had an inflation rate above 35%, and the employment situation, everything was down. Then you say why did they go negotiate... The reason for the failure of the negotiations is that you balked halfway through. You went and enacted something else."
As then reminded by Omid Dana, the reformist argument is that things such as ballistic missile tests (mostly done by the IRGC and similar institutions and probably without the approval of the Rohani administration) are supposedly at fault.
Abdi goes on: "Then you say, for example, why did he negotiate? Well fine then, don't negotiate. As of tomorrow, let's see if you dare not to negotiate. Like a man, like a man. Now wait and I'll show you. You are standing in line for negotiations."
Upon which Omid Dana adds that this last point may well be true. And that Zarif's words might get vindicated, when he suggested that those who oppose the JCPOA are opposing it because they themselves weren't the ones to negotiate it. Their issue, according to Zarif, is with the fact that the moderate-reformist coalition government did the negotiations. And if the latter vacate the seat of power, the principlists / revolutionaries will want to go negotiate in turn.
According to Dana, whispers can be heard here and there among the principlist / revolutionary camp suggesting that Iran should hold "good" negotiations, i.e. from a position of power. To which Dana replies that there are no "good" and "bad" negotiations, and that the most important point is here to correctly identify why Iran has been sanctioned in the first place: they sanctioned Iran in order to exert pressure on her. Exert pressure so that Iran goes to the negotiating table and makes unilateral concessions there. In which case they'll remove some of the sanctions. "Now, these gentlemen are saying "let's go negotiate because the US has sanctioned us" - which is exactly the reason why the US sanctioned Iran, to get her to negotiate" (read: make considerable concessions while obtaining little in return). Therefore, under these circumstances and considering Iran's 40+ years of experience with the US, any negotiation is wrong by essence.
This experience, Dana further expounds, ought to show everyone that the sanctions are here to stay unless Iran neutralizes their impact, in which case they will be lifted. The fact that they accepted to grant Iran its right to enrich uranium to up to 20% (after initially insisting on a 2% or so limit) was not a result of talks and negotiations, but stemmed from the efforts of Iranian scientists. So now the Americans are trying to have Iran settle for 20% as the upper limit. If Iran wants to be entitled to 90% enrichment, this will not be achieved at the negotiation table but at Iran's nuclear sites.
Abdi is shown again, stating: "What are these things you're saying against the JCPOA? I don't know, some camera moved up or down there. They took a decision to sanction you, they caused you over 100 billion dollars of damage. That whole million dollar there has no worth." "You don't even have access to your dollars. Why did you even yield to the JCPOA? Why did you validate it? You validate it and then balk, I mean this is not how you manage a country."
Dana then resumes his commentary, stating that while he rejects the dishonesty of liberals (many of whose offspring reside in North America, and who can walk in and out of the US without a problem) when it comes to Iran "balking" at the negotiation process, Abdi does have a point insofar as the Islamic Republic will ultimately have to make up its mind, and that this will happen in the upcoming election by the grace of God. The Revolution's goal was for Iran to resist [the imperialists]. So if we want to resist, Dana explains, it's not right that generals Soleimani and Hamadani travel the region only for liberals to leak their movements to the enemy. But if we are to capitulate, Dana pursues, "then you made a mistake to overthrow the shah".
Now Rohani and company are pretending that we can't resist against "the world" (by which they mean the western victors of WW2), we must accomodate it. "Well if you wanted to accomodate", says Dana, "the shah was a better choice for that, he had more appealing looks" (Dana is striking a humorous tone here), his government was granting more social freedoms, so were you crazy to do a Revolution?" Rohani and Abdi (and present time liberals in general) used to belong to the most radical factions of the early days of the Revolution. And so, Dana argues, they ought to be ashamed about aiming for a return to pre-revolutionary conditions now after 43 years. "Since the shah was already making all these unilateral concessions, without Iran losing so many martyrs" (in the Iran-Iraq war and so on).
"And back then, the Americans had not decided to balkanize and dismantle Iran. Do not forget that. The US and its agenda took such a hit at the hands of the Islamic Republic that today they have decided on balkanization." "If the Islamic Republic abandons midway the path it took, it will have committed an act of treason to Iran." "On the path which the Islamic Republic initiated, there's no turning back."
"We gave so many martyrs, so many greats on the level of Soleimani disappeared so that you [liberals] may return to the path the shah was treading? We won't allow it; this time, us, the Iranist movement [nationalists] are going to grab you by the collar."
Another snippet from the TV show follows, with Abdi saying: "The reason why the JCPOA reached a dead end, is that foreign policy was not in conformity with the JCPOA. In that case, you shouldn't have validated the JCPOA in the first place. Your Parliament validated it. And your Guardian Council validated it."
Dana goes on for three to four additional minutes, but I now almost translated the whole thing!
This illustrates, by the way, the level of freedom of speech prevailing in the Islamic Republic, and how completely opposite views are expressed by activists and/or officials from the different camps on national TV.
I deliberately included many of the comments made by Omid Dana, so as to offer you and all other non-Farsi-speaking regulars of the section a glimpse into the discourse of this vlogger whose clips you regularly see being shared here, possibly asking yourself what exactly he might be on about.
His discourse is indeed quite efficient and appeals to various categories of Iranian society. In all likelihood, nobody has managed to rally behind the flag as many Iranians who used to be opposed to the Islamic Republic due to being susceptible to the anti-IR propaganda campaign sponsored by Iran's enemies, that is the zio-Americans and their assorted clients in the west and in Iran's neighborhood. Among Dana's followers one will thus find scores of people who have nothing in common with the IR on the ideological level, in particular (but not limited to) less religious or even irreligious Iranians, as well as non-Islamic nationalists. Which is why Dana has been receiving dozens of more or less serious death threats every day ever since he engaged in this effort. He has literally driven the exiled opposition apparatus mad.
This is while he himself used to be a staunch opponent of the IR, and even a lower tier youth leader during the so-called Green movement of 2009. However unlike the mostly liberal Green movement folk, Dana pertains to the hardcore monarchist and nationalist camp. Initially he even used to be islamophobic, but has abandoned that position since (nonetheless he considers himself Zoroastrian, despite being born to Muslim parents). He spent some three years at Evin prison following the 2009 riots, after which he left Iran for Europe, where he initially continued his opposition activities against the IR, mingling with Reza Pahlavi's followers.
But two things made him completely reverse his allegiance: one, his first hand discovery that the simplistic binary representation of the west as some sort of a "paradise" versus Iran as some sort of a "hell" to live in, which is propagated by the anti-IR opposition and their western patrons, is far removed from reality; and two, his prolonged contacts with the exiled opposition made him realize that these people are essentially footmen of hostile foreign powers bent not only on overthrowing the IR, but also on literally balkanizing and destroying Iran.
Dana has his own interpretations about the Islamic Republic's power projection in the region and about Shia Islam, which he contemplates from a nationalistic lense. The core support base of the IR, i.e. its religious supporters, firmly disagree with this view. Nonetheless, Dana has managed to shield a non-negligible portion of the population from the nefarious influence of opposition and hostile powers propaganda, thereby bringing together Iranians from different ideological backgrounds, which is directly beneficial to the stability of both the political system of the Islamic Republic and of Iran itself.
listen); Persian: عباس عبدی; born 1 October 1956) is one of Iran's most influential reformists, journalist, self-taught sociologist and social activist. 
en.wikipedia.org
