December 25 2020
The Europeans are showing increasing irritation with Iran over its practice of adding new types of violations to the JCPOA every week or so while the Supreme Leader has now expressed disinterest in even trying to get US sanctions lifted under President Biden.
The new developments seem to be moving the parties to the JCPOA further apart just weeks before Donald Trump leaves the scene. The new positions push the idea of everyone returning to the JCPOA further from center stage.
The Europeans are not just concerned with Iranian violations of the JCPOA nuclear agreement, but are also talking more and more about its ballistic missile program and its interventionist activities across the Arab world—again, making any return to the JCPOA harder.
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi made a major policy speech November 24 in which he called on government officials to focus their attention on ways to thwart the sanctions, rather than seeking their removal by the new Biden Administration.
Khamenehi slammed the sanctions as a “bitter reality” and a “crime” committed against the Iranian people. He then said that Iranian officials must shift their efforts from trying to get sanctions lifted to finding ways to thwart them. He has repeated that several times, so it sounds like that is a policy he has handed down, rather than just so much rhetoric.
Khamenehi seemed to be trying to have his cake and eat it too. On the one hand, he would prioritize ways to evade sanctions while on the other hand continuing to enrich more uranium than allowed under the JCPOA. The problem is that there is no obvious way Iran can avoid the chief sanctions, which have vastly reduced Iran’s crude oil sales and butchered state revenues.
Iran has been able to get around many US banking restrictions and managed to export and import goods—but the questions are how much more must Iran pay for imports and how much it must discount its prices for exports. Many reports over the years have spoken of imports costing a quarter to a third more and exports earning from a quarter to a third less.
On the issue of talks on “revising” the JCPOA, China and Russia have stood by Iran. Saying there is no need for revisions and the US and Iran need only to resume their adherence to the JCPOA provisions.
But Rafael Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said talks were needed because too much has changed. “I cannot imagine that they [the seven signatories to the JCPOA] are going simply to say, ‘We are back to Square One,’ because Square One is no longer there.” (See article at top of page.)
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas also made clear that just saying everyone should return to the old JCPOA is not good enough. “A return to the previous agreement will not suffice. There will have to be a kind of ‘nuclear agreement plus’.”
He went on to make clear that he was speaking for France and Britain as well. “We have clear expectations of Iran: no nuclear weapons, but also no ballistic missile program that threatens the entire region. Iran also needs to play a different role in the region. We need this agreement precisely because we distrust Iran. I have already coordinated with my French and British counterparts on this.”
A problem rarely mentioned is that Iran decided many months ago to ignore restrictions on its nuclear research and development work. While Iran could get back into compliance on the number of centrifuges it is using simply by warehousing the added centrifuges it has added in the last year, there is no way it can put R&D advances back into the bottle. Thus, that would require an adjustment in the agreement.
A number of European officials, however, have gone further and said it is time to revise the JCPOA to address Iran’s advancing work on ballistic missiles and its funding of private armies in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Bahrain. That is a huge non-starter for Iran. The Obama Administration recognized Iran’s aversion to talks on those issues and so decided to address only the nuclear issue, which it saw as the greatest concern to the West. The Europeans liked that idea several years ago, but now think that may have been an error.
President Rohani recognized those rumbles from the West, and on December 14 stated flatly that Iran’s missile program is non-negotiable. He said nothing about Iran’s funding of armed groups abroad, but the Islamic Republic does not admit to that so he cannot comment on it.
French President Emmanuel Macron has made numerous statements over the past year indicating that Iran’s missile program is his chief concern.
Iran seems to be a bit rattled by this European emphasis on irritations with Iran beyond nuclear topics. A few months ago, the Islamic Republic said it would not be satisfied with the United States simply dropping sanctions and adhering to the JCPOA, but was also demanding “compensation” for the damage sanctions have done to Iran’s economy. But the compensation demand has disappeared from Iran’s rhetoric in recent weeks.
President-elect Joe Biden’s position is vague. Before the election, he wrote, “If Iran returns to strict compliance with the nuclear deal, the United States would rejoin the agreement as a starting point for follow-on negotiations.”