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On two principles Iran and the new U.S.
administration agree: first, the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure”
policy aimed at Tehran was a failure and, secondly, reviving the promise of the
2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is a strategic imperative. The
two sides have correctly diagnosed the problem and identified a remedy
satisfactory to them both, so one would think that the hard part would be over.
Yet Washington and Tehran remain locked in an avoidable diplomatic stalemate,
each insisting that the other take the first step. To escape the impasse, and
prevent the JCPOA’s collapse, they need to act swiftly and decisively. The best
path would be quiet, direct negotiations. But if that is not possible, the
European Union can mediate by encouraging both sides to make initial good-will
gestures that will pave the way for direct multilateral talks. Once at the
table, all sides can focus on establishing an interim arrangement that stops
the standoff from worsening further, followed by an agreement on synchronised
steps that bring Iran and the U.S. back into compliance with the deal. The
parties should then build on the JCPOA to create a stronger and more stable
follow-on accord that addresses broader concerns.
President Joe Biden took office rightly critical of his
predecessor’s Iran strategy. The Trump administration declared in 2018 that by
unilaterally exiting the nuclear agreement and pursuing a sanctions-driven
policy of economic coercion, it would force Iran back to the table and deliver
a stronger nuclear deal that would also blunt Iran’s power projection in the
Middle East. The strategy failed spectacularly, producing the opposite of its
intended effects. It exacerbated regional tensions and damaged transatlantic
unity while eroding the deal’s non-proliferation gains.
Almost three years on, having
methodically reduced its JCPOA compliance in response to Trump’s economic
siege, Iran is enriching uranium at pre-deal levels, expanding its stockpile of
enriched uranium to more than fourteen times the deal’s 202.8kg limit,
deploying advanced centrifuges alongside the first-generation models to which
the deal largely restricted it, and manufacturing uranium metal, which the
JCPOA banned it from producing until 2031. As a result, the “breakout time”
that Iran would need to produce a bomb’s worth of fissile material has dropped
from a year to around three months. Meanwhile, Iran has curbed the
indispensable verification and monitoring authorities of the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) by suspending in late February provisional
implementation of the Additional Protocol and transparency provisions outlined
in the JCPOA. These remain in jeopardy of further degradation if Tehran adheres
to the letter of a law the Majles, or parliament, passed following the November
2020 assassination, allegedly by
Israel, of a top Iranian nuclear scientist.
The [Biden] administration’s
conciliatory moves have been overshadowed by more hawkish ones.
The new administration in Washington
brought an opportunity to turn the page. Despite its violations of the agreement’s
nuclear provisions, Iran has remained a JCPOA participant. It has declared
these steps to be reversible and has pledged to resume full compliance with its
obligations if and when the deal’s other parties deliver on theirs, in the form
of economic reprieve envisaged by the agreement and undone by U.S. sanctions.
For its part, the Biden administration has, since coming to office, taken a
series of actions to signal its interest in diplomatic re-engagement. It has
appointed Obama-era JCPOA negotiators to its
senior diplomatic ranks, eased travel restrictions on
Iranian diplomats in New York and rescinded the Trump administration’s (widely dismissed) claim
of having snapped back pre-JCPOA UN sanctions. It also issued a joint statement with
its European counterparts (the UK, France and Germany, known as the E3) to
clarify that its aim is to resuscitate the JCPOA before trying to build on it.
It readily agreed to
join an informal meeting of JCPOA participants that the EU offered to
host.
Yet the administration’s conciliatory
moves have been overshadowed by more hawkish ones. Pressured by JCPOA opponents
in Washington and the Middle East, it has adopted tough rhetoric on
Iran. It has triggered an unnecessary public feud over
who should move first to return to compliance and signalled that it would just
as soon play the blame game as
embark on serious diplomacy. Most importantly in Tehran’s eyes, it has failed
to lift any of the sanctions that Trump levied against Iran, which in Tehran’s
view amount to collective punishment of the Iranian people amid a deadly
pandemic. Nor has Washington taken limited actions that
would have signalled serious intent without rolling back sanctions. These might
have included facilitating an IMF emergency loan or the transfer of frozen
Iranian assets held abroad – steps justifiable on humanitarian grounds and that
could have been made subject to strong due diligence in order to ensure
appropriate disbursement. The Biden team baulked at even these measures, loath
to make what anti-JCPOA advocates in the U.S. would have seen as tantamount to
down payments on sanctions removal and Tehran could have perceived as U.S.
concessions to its pressure tactics.
Iran rejected the EU’s offer of
an informal meeting of JCPOA participants. It did so primarily because the U.S.
has not meaningfully redressed what Iran sees as the original sin that led the
parties to this situation, namely the U.S. “maximum pressure” policy and
accompanying sanctions architecture. From Iran’s perspective, Washington may
have jettisoned the Trump-era strategy in word, but it is continuing that
approach in deed. A senior Iranian official assessed the situation as follows:
“If we wanted to negotiate with the enforcers of ‘maximum pressure’, we would
have talked to Trump”.
Iran and the U.S. both entered the
post-Trump period with inflated expectations [...], and now both could overplay
their hand.
The diplomatic deadlock is indicative of
an uncomfortable truth: Iran and the U.S. both entered the post-Trump period
with inflated expectations, overestimating their leverage, and now both could
overplay their hand. Tehran believed that Washington would re-enter the JCPOA
unilaterally and afford significant up-front sanctions relief even while Iran
was ratcheting up its nuclear program and possibly greenlighting its allied
Iraqi militias’ attacks on U.S.
troops and interests in Iraq. For its part, Washington believed that Iran was
so desperate for sanctions to be lifted that it would eagerly concede to
negotiations without foreknowledge of deliverable returns, and that strikes on Iran-backed
militias in the region would dissuade Tehran from imposing a new cost on the
U.S. Both sets of notions turned out to be unrealistic.
As a result, the fundamental dynamics
between Tehran and Washington remain only marginally different from those before
20 January. True, where previously the two sides were talking at and over each
other, now they are at least talking about talking to each
other. But they are not yet negotiating directly. The E3, for their part, by
increasingly siding with Washington instead of pushing both sides to live up to
their JCPOA obligations, are frittering away the political capital they
accumulated through their strong support for the deal during the Trump
presidency. Iran increasingly suspects that the West is intent on using U.S.
sanctions as leverage – not to revive the JCPOA as previously negotiated, but
to coerce Tehran down what it sees as a slippery slope of concessions on
Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities and
regional power projection.
If the parties stay the course, with
each side waiting for the other to blink first and in the meantime insatiably
seeking more leverage, they will find themselves in an increasingly grim place.
For Iran, it will mean watching the country’s finances buckle under the weight
of U.S. sanctions, while Washington works to close ranks with the E3 to show
the Islamic Republic a reunified Western front. For the U.S., it will mean
facing the further erosion of Iran’s breakout time as JCPOA breaches and
regional tensions surge – amply illustrated in recent incidents in Yemen, Iraq, Syria and the Gulf of Oman. All of
these incidents have happened while there is still hope for the JCPOA’s
revival. If that hope is dashed, it will become more difficult to restrain
hawks on both sides who have been pushing for bolder and more perilous
escalation.
Where to go from here? If, as President
Biden and top U.S. officials argue, the destination is the revival of and
mutual compliance with the JCPOA as a stepping stone toward negotiations over a
better-for-better nuclear deal and addressing broader concerns, the parties can
chart an alternative path.
In the past few days, they have given
signs of preparedness to salvage the deal. Iran signalled good-will by working
around the Majles’ action forcing it to restrict international oversight of its
nuclear program. Rouhani did so by negotiating a temporary technical agreement
with the IAEA on 21 February that extended much of its oversight capability.
The agency’s director-general, Rafael Grossi, stated that this understanding makes
it possible “to continue to monitor and to register all the key activities that
are taking place” over the next three months. The temporary agreement prompted a majority
of Iranian lawmakers to lodge a legal complaint against the Rouhani government.
For their part, the U.S. and the E3 treated this gesture as conciliatory and
reciprocated by deciding not to press ahead with a censure resolution at the
IAEA’s Board of Governors this week that would have condemned Iran’s suspension
of the Additional Protocol and failure to respond to outstanding IAEA questions
about its past nuclear activities.
An immediate step out of the stalemate
could be an agreement on an initial exchange of gestures that could break the
deadlock. Such an agreement would require either quiet U.S.-Iran discussions or
third-party mediation. The EU, which coordinates the JCPOA’s implementation and
maintains lines of contact with all stakeholders, is perhaps best placed to
play intermediary between the Biden administration and Tehran, indirectly
orchestrating initial steps that could make convening the informal meeting
possible. Such initial steps might include, for example, the U.S. facilitating Iran’s
access to some of its frozen assets for humanitarian imports in return for
Iran halting one of the proliferation-sensitive nuclear activities it is now
pursuing. Once at the table, the parties should negotiate an interim
arrangement designed to prevent a further worsening of the situation, followed
by a timetable for simultaneously reversing Iran’s nuclear breaches and U.S.
sanctions.
The longer the diplomatic
stalemate continues, the more it is likely to be filled with the kind of
brinksmanship that could jeopardise what remains of the nuclear deal.
Time is of the essence. While it is
possible to roll back Iran’s nuclear program amid the country’s presidential
campaign, which begins in mid-April and culminates in the 18 June election,
negotiations are bound to become more difficult if the parties do not build
significant momentum by then. It is equally risky to postpone Washington’s
JCPOA re-entry until a new Iranian president comes to office in August, as
restoring the agreement with its strongest proponents in Iran would be easier
than with their critics, should they win. The longer the diplomatic stalemate
continues, the more it is likely to be filled with the kind of brinksmanship
that could jeopardise what remains of the nuclear deal and further inflame
regional tensions.
The Iran-U.S. impasse of the Biden
administration’s early days could turn out to be a blip before reason prevails
on both sides. Thus far, however, it risks being a waste of precious weeks
marked by pointless posturing or, worse still, the trigger of a dangerous
regional standoff. The same logic that brought Iran and world powers to fashion
the JCPOA, and which led its remaining signatories to preserve it after Trump withdrew,
holds today. The alternative – a race between sanctions and centrifuges that
could culminate in Iran obtaining a nuclear bomb or being bombed, or both –
would be immeasurably worse. That outcome still can and should be avoided.
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