There exists now a brief window of time for Iran and the
United States to return to the principles of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of
Action, known to supporters and critics alike as the Iran nuclear deal.
اضافة اعلان
In 2015, a group of world powers signed on to relax some
international sanctions if Iran gave up the most worrisome aspects of its
nuclear program and agreed to robust inspections. The nuclear deal wasn’t a
peace deal. It was an agreement to resolve the nuclear issue peacefully. In
2018, the Trump administration unilaterally withdrew from that agreement,
convinced that a new set of far more oppressive sanctions would cripple the
country enough to humiliate it into accepting new terms more favorable to the United
States.
President Donald Trump’s gambit failed. The new sanctions
have crippled the country. But they also prompted the Iranian government to
restart nuclear work that it had given up. That’s why Robert Malley, President
Joe Biden’s special envoy to Iran, spent this past week in Vienna negotiating
the path back to US compliance with the deal. Diplomatic niceties being what
they are, European diplomats shuttled between the US and Iranian delegations,
which were holed up in separate hotels. The talks, which have been described as
“constructive and results-oriented,” will continue next week. That’s cause for
cautious optimism.
On offer from the United States is an end to most of the
“maximum pressure” sanctions that the Trump administration piled on in an
attempt to seal Iran off from the global economy. Those sanctions target a wide
array of the country’s institutions, including its central bank, its oil
ministry, and the National Iranian Oil Co.
Of course, the same old spoilers who never wanted a deal in
the first place are loath to see the US talk about resuscitating it. The most
common criticism is that lifting the sanctions — honoring the United States’
old commitments — will squander leverage that has been accrued the past three
years.
At this point, the hard-line approach defies common sense.
If the United States refuses to honor the first agreement, why would Iranians
ever trust it to honor a second?
The uncomfortable truth is that “maximum pressure” sanctions
are unsustainable. They haven’t changed Iranian behavior for the better. Quite
the opposite. To punish the United States for refusing to hold up its end of
the bargain, Iran has orchestrated calibrated violations of its own — to remind
the United States what a world without the Iran nuclear deal looks like. Under
the nuclear deal, Iran was allowed to enrich uranium up to a purity of 3.67
percent, far below weapons grade. It is now enriching up to 20 percent purity.
Under the nuclear deal, Iran was limited to 202.8kg of uranium. It is now estimated
to have stockpiled 3 tons.
Under the nuclear deal, international inspectors were also
allowed to investigate every inch of Iran’s nuclear fuel cycle with little
advance notice. Now inspectors have been notified that they will lose that kind
of access.
The situation is also untenable in other ways. Sanctions on
Iranian banks and European and Asian institutions that do business with Iran
were originally intended to produce enough short-term pain to force
negotiations. Leaving them in place indefinitely risks driving the entire
economy of Iran, a sophisticated country of more than 80 million people, onto
the black market. It will empower the most hard-line and criminal elements in
the country, including Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. It will make fools of moderates,
including President Hassan Rouhani, who spent political capital on forging a
deal with the United States and wants to see it back on track before he leaves
office in August.
Other countries in the Middle East have valid concerns about
Iran’s support for Shiite militias in the region and the proliferation of
ballistic missiles technology. Some nations argue that the Trump-era sanctions
should be left in place to starve Iran of cash that can be used for such
mischief-making. But starvation hasn’t worked thus far. It has made Iran an
even more belligerent neighbor.
If the nuclear program can be brought under control
peacefully, a regional coalition could address Iran’s role in the region.
Leverage abounds: Even if Biden rolls back the Trump-era sanctions, a vast
majority of US sanctions will be left in place, leaving economic leverage that
can be used to strike follow-on agreements.
Biden’s foreign policy team came into office promising to
make the nuclear agreement “longer and stronger”, a worthy goal. The first step
toward it is getting back into the deal.
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