Members of the local Iranian community are expressing wary optimism and uncertainty over the ceasefire deal that the United States and Iran reached on Sunday.
The deal, which is expected to be formally signed on Friday, will extend the current U.S.-Iran ceasefire deal by 60 days and reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
Amin Feizpour is the founder of the Iran Circle, a Boston-based nonprofit aimed at facilitating conversations around politics, culture and history across the Iranian diaspora.
“War is never good. War is never a solution. I’m happy that there is a ceasefire deal and that this madness really has stopped,” Feizpour said. “But I’m just very doubtful about the outcomes of this deal being in any way good for the people inside Iran.”
Feizpour said the war weakened the Islamic Republic regime in the short term, but argued it strengthened it in the long term, which he thinks will make things worse for people in Iran.
He adds that before the war, there was discussion in Iran around how the Islamic Republic could be held accountable for violating human rights, including the killings of thousands of protesters earlier this year.
“In the deal, you don’t see anything about how that’s going to be addressed, how the human rights crisis in Iran is going to be addressed?” Feizpour said.
And he doesn’t see any agreement to hold the United States accountable for making the situation in Iran “significantly worse.”
Mohammad Ali Kadivar, professor of sociology and international studies at Boston College, said the ceasefire is fragile because such deals have not historically held very long in the Middle East. But still, this is “a historic moment.”
He said the United States is now taking a very different approach compared to the start of the war earlier this year.
“The United States was trying to do a regime change in Iran, violating Iran’s sovereignty, killing Iranian leaders and trying to decimate the Iranian military,” Kadivar said.
Like Feizpour, Kadivar agreed that the regime of the Islamic Republic will remain in place. But he said the ceasefire deal can bring security to the Iranian people, which is “the most important precondition” for giving them access to wealth, welfare and political freedom.
“A lot of Iranians have been pushed under poverty over last year since the campaign of maximum pressure ... that I don’t think will change overnight because now we have all the cost of the war,” said Kadivar. “But I think sanction relief eventually can put the economy on the course back to reconstruction.”
The ultimate goal in the upcoming talks is permanently ending the war. Feizpour and Kadivar agree, though, there won’t be real change until Israel is brought into the deal.
“These kinds of conflicts are just going to come back sooner or later, again and again, until there is a really significant change in Israel, in a way that Netanyahu has no more power and the far-right extremist government has no more in power,” Feizpour said.
“Iran and the U.S. are both interested in keeping the deal, but there are issues of long mistrust between the two parties,” Kadivar said. “But the fact that they have moved to this direction — and I think both actors have interest and stake to have this deal going forward, also — could provide a chance for its success.”
