According to Titrsanat, the case of the confiscated building known as the National Iranian Oil Company House in London has once again pushed the Crescent case back to the top of the news cycle and has become familiar to almost everyone. But what I intend to discuss in this article is not a re-examination of a specific case; rather, it is an exploration of a deep-rooted and recurring crisis: the systemic disregard for contractual obligations and legal frameworks.
Whether it occurs at the private level or on the broader international stage.
In different periods, the name of a particular contract becomes prominent in the public mind; but the real issue is not the names themselves, rather the harmful pattern that keeps repeating and continually imposes growing costs on the country. What occurs in these noisy turning points is a mix of excitement and legal negligence.
Sometimes contracts are concluded in an ambiguous and rushed environment, often based on complete trust, and the necessary due diligence—especially legal assessments and risk evaluation—ends up sacrificed under the pressure of time and the fear of missing an opportunity.

And only when a dispute arises — when we are suddenly faced with a large volume of legal cases referred to competent judicial and legal authorities due to carelessness, oversight, or perhaps misplaced trust between the parties — we remember concepts such as arbitration clauses, governing law, sanctions obligations, reciprocal commitments, and dozens of other legal subtleties; all at a time when correction is no longer possible and the costs have risen exponentially.
One of the roots of this crisis is the entrenched culture of entitlement and imposed authority within certain public and governmental institutions — the assumption that contractual terms can be altered or even nullified by relying on administrative or political power. This mentality may work in internal bureaucratic relations or with weaker domestic counterparts, where the real private sector is often the main victim. But in the realm of international contracts, the only things that carry weight are the contract’s text and the governing law. An international arbitrator or judge is neither influenced by our authority nor intimidated by our power; he considers only the provisions of the contract, the documentation, meeting minutes, written negotiation records, available evidence, and legal principles.
The habit of imposing authority in the domestic environment leads us into a dangerous cognitive mistake: we assume the same rules apply beyond our borders; yet the reality is entirely different. Another common error is the underestimation of consultancy costs, including legal advice. Some ask why they should pay tens or even hundreds of thousands of tomans or dollars for consultation.

But they do not ask how many hundreds of millions or even billions of tomans or dollars may be lost if they don’t. Time is humanity’s most valuable asset, yet it is traded away in the corridors of the judiciary at the cost of negligence and oversimplification. Even worse, after a dispute arises, there is still little willingness to pay those who actually know the path — lawyers and experts — and as a result, cases that could have been contained early on with a legal team or qualified professionals turn into extremely costly defeats, all paid for by false pride.
Another issue — mainly a domestic one — is the absence of a unified and up-to-date institutional system for managing the contract lifecycle and its implementation. A coherent chain has yet to form in the country: from the pre-contract stage, negotiation, drafting, and attachment control, to monitoring the fulfillment of obligations, managing disputes, and enforcing arbitral awards. Where no system exists, personal preferences take over; and when preferences dominate, accountability fades.

Fulfilling contractual obligations cannot be achieved through moral advice alone; it requires a disciplined legal framework, precise oversight mechanisms, and the enforcement of law. On the other hand, another misconception must be addressed: reducing a contract to merely the beginning of a cooperation, rather than an enforceable document. A contract is not just a goodwill memorandum; it is a legal roadmap in which risks are allocated, the path ahead and the scope of responsibilities are defined, commitments are specified, performance indicators are established, and mechanisms for compensation and dispute resolution are outlined.

Total disregard for a contract leads to disorder and chaos, increases the cost of fulfilling obligations, and ultimately results in failure. Another mistake is the illusion that a contract can be constantly altered during execution. We assume we can ignore a clause today and broadly reinterpret another one tomorrow. A contract is not a notebook for personal notes; it is a registry of binding commitments.

As John Locke emphasizes in his Second Treatise of Civil Government, the purpose of government is to protect the life, liberty, and property of its citizens — and this goal is impossible without the security of contracts. A contract is the mechanism through which the free will of individuals is transformed into social order. If contracts fall outside the protection of the law, society reverts to a pre-civil condition, where force — not rights — becomes the determining factor. Therefore, safeguarding contracts is not merely a legal matter; it is a foundational principle of a modern and accountable system of governance.

The influence of politics on contracts should not be overlooked. A good contract requires good governance — policies that respect regulatory stability, decision-making predictability, and the separation between the roles of policymakers and economic executors. When these boundaries become blurred and technical decisions become subject to political shocks, contracts transform from tools of development into ticking time bombs. Even the best lawyers in the world cannot perform miracles in the face of political risks that are uninsurable and unpredictable.

In the end, it must be stated clearly that failure to honor commitments is not a tactical mistake but an institutional ailment. Every high-profile case that today becomes a tool for political score-settling will, tomorrow, lead to a heavy silence made of invisible costs and lost opportunities. The trust, capital, and technologies that have been lost are not easily recoverable. The remedy for this situation lies not in fiery speeches or general slogans, but in restoring contractual order to the core of governance, in the uncompromising enforcement of the law, in legal professionalism, and in transparent, institutionalized accountability.