June 17, 2022
by Warren L. Nelson
The nuclear negotiations have been stuffed in the freezer since March with absolutely no movement since President Biden rejected Iran’s call for him to lift sanctions on the Pasdaran and the Islamic Republic responded by refusing to back off the demand.
There are several other issues outstanding, so a resolution of the Pasdar issue won’t mean all is done and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) revived.
What’s more, there are indications that majorities in both Tehran and Washington no longer care about a revival.
The Raisi Administration took office looking down on the JCPOA as a Reformist initiative. It decided to make a try at reviving it, but hardliners have mobilized their followers around such causes as the Pasdaran’s terrorist designation to build strong opposition to revival—even though the Pasdaran’s designation has nothing whatsoever to do with the nuclear agreement. Now, the Raisi Administration is disinterested in expending any more political capital in an effort to revive the JCPOA and spends its time talking about plans to evade US sanctions.
In fact, many think the new economic policy of the Raisi Administration is intended to shift the economy so it is better oriented to operate in the face of continuing sanctions. Saeed Laylaz, a prominent economist, told The Washington Post, “The recent moves of the Iranian government send a very clear message that they’ve lost hope in the nuclear deal or don’t want to enact it. With these economic reforms, they’re sending the message that they don’t depend on the deal anymore.”
But even some moderates in Tehran are having doubts about returning to the JCPOA. They point out that the Islamic Republic will still remain on the blacklist of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a listing that effectively cuts it off from the international banking system and makes it unlikely it will see much investment or be able to transact business easily even if the JCPOA is revived.
In Washington, meanwhile, a growing number of Democrats have openly opposed revival as Republicans are convincing a growing number of voters that the JCPOA won’t stop Iran’s nuclear program and will merely give Iran a fistful of dollars that are now denied it by sanctions. Democrats are looking at elections just five months away and many see the JCPOA as a losing issue with the electorate.
The State Department’s chief negotiator on the nuclear deal, Robert Malley, even told Congress May 25 that the JCPOA’s future looks bleak; he said the prospects for reaching a deal “are, at best, tenuous.”
The State Department has several times hoisted the Islamic Republic on its own petard. Tehran entered the nuclear talks more than a year ago repeatedly saying it would not even consider the Western desire to have the dates when restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program end pushed further into the future or to expand the agreement to address Iran’s military operations around the Middle East. Iran said over and over again that the talks were only about the JCPOA itself and that nothing that would cover new ground could be included.
For the last few months, Washington has been quoting back to Tehran its own limits on the talks, saying the designation of the Pasdaran as a terrorist organization is not a topic for the nuclear talks.
The Islamic Republic has spent the last few months doing little more than making rhetorical attacks on the United States, telling the Iranian people how evil and untrustworthy the Americans are—which only makes it harder to reach an agreement that the public will support.
The latest attack came after the Biden Administration imposed new sanctions for an oil smuggling scheme by Iran to evade sanctions. Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said, “This recent measure is yet another sign of the US government’s ill will toward the Iranian people.” But the new sanctions would have no impact on the “Iranian people.” They were not sanctions on Iran, but on individuals and entities that helped the smuggling. And most of them were foreign people and companies. Of the 19 people and firms sanctioned, only four people and one firm were Iranian; the other 14 were foreign.
The irony of more people in both Tehran and Washington moving into the anti-JCPOA camp is that there is one country where more people are speaking out in favor of the JCPOA. That is Israel! In recent weeks, a number of retired military officers and diplomats have spoken out publicly to say that Israel would be better off with the JCPOA in force. Those voices argue that while the agreement will not stop Iran from getting a bomb, it will at least push its bomb debut a few years into the future, giving Israel more time to prepare to take on Iran.
Meanwhile, the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) said that Iran is positioned to be able to enrich to weapons grade enough uranium for five bombs within six months—but it also said it would take “a year or two” for Iran to figure out how to put a bomb in warheads fitted atop missiles.
Malley, the State Department’s point man on Iran, gave a succinct summary on where the Biden Administration sees relations with Iran. In prepared testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee May 25, he said the following:
“As I speak to you today, we do not have a deal with Iran and prospects for reaching one are, at best, tenuous. If Iran maintains demands that go beyond the scope of the JCPOA, we will continue to reject them, and there will be no deal. We are fully prepared to live with and confront that reality if that is Iran’s choice, ready to continue to enforce and further tighten our sanctions, albeit this time around with Europe firmly by our side, and to respond strongly to any Iranian escalation, working in concert with Israel and our regional partners.
“We will have demonstrated our firm commitment to resolving even the most difficult problems through diplomacy, and Iran’s government will need to explain to its people why it has chosen isolation and even greater economic hardship when a realistic deal was readily at hand.
“We harbor no illusion. Nuclear deal or no nuclear deal, this Iranian government will remain a threat. Nuclear deal or no nuclear deal, it will continue to sponsor terrorism, threaten Israel, sow instability across the region, fund, train and equip an array of violent non-state actors, and oppress its people. But the bottom line is that every single one of the problems we face with Iran would be vastly magnified, and our freedom of action to address them significantly reduced, if Iran’s leaders acquired a nuclear weapon or if it remains, as it is now, close to being able to obtain the material for one.
“Conversely, we will be in a much stronger position to confront them if we restore the constraints on Iran’s nuclear program that today are on the verge of disappearing.”
