Iranian ambassador visits Erasmus University: ‘I want to be careful with what I say’

In the Iran deal, it was agreed that Iran would minimise its nuclear activity. In exchange, the United States and the United Nations would lift the harmful economic sanctions on Iran. The deal is now in jeopardy following the United States’ withdrawal in May.

In his lecture, Kazemi Abadi talked about the country of Iran itself as well as about how the deal was reached in 2015. “The negotiations were only scheduled to take six months. But it took two years of intensive negotiations before an agreement was reached.”

In fact, the three quarters of an hour planned for Mr Kazemi Abadi’s lecture was too short. He wanted to say more but was interrupted by lecturer Julian Emami Namini because time has been reserved for questions from the room. Mr Kazemi Abadi asked whether he could continue for another five minutes, but no, it was now time to ask questions.

Students in the aula mainly seemed interested in the relationships between Iran and other countries. “How do you see the future of global negotiations now that the United States have become less reliable and the United Nations too weak?” asks one student. “There is no representative from the United States here to defend them, so I want to be careful with what I say,” the ambassador begins. “International relations and negotiations involve a great deal of uncertainty. Things can happen very quickly. It very much depends on the decision of one person, not on the policy of one country,” Mr Kazemi Abadi replies.

This is the second time that Emami Namini has invited the Iranian ambassador as part of his course of lectures. “We select our guest speakers by subject. The current conflicts between Iran and China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States and Germany with respect to the deal makes this subject very interesting to students. We decided to invite the Iranian ambassador because he is the deputy head of the Iran deal team of the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” says Emami Namini.

Reactions to the lecture are positive, although there are some comments. “I’m half American, and because the Unites States were part of this deal, it was interesting to learn more about it,” says Chris, an Economics and Business Economics (IBEB) student. “I’d have liked him to have given more in-depth information about the deal, but I appreciated his diplomacy with respect to other countries.”

Annryca Ferrao, another IBEB student, shares Chris’ opinion. “I learned more about Iran and about the deal itself, but I feel he could have given more details about the deal. It would also have been nice to have had a bit more information about the questions asked by the students and the answers he gave. He was a bit vague at times.”