February 26, 2021
by Warren L. Nelson
Iran and the United States have been engaging in a political dance since the Biden presidency began, with both nations insisting they want to resurrect the Obama nuclear deal, but neither government doing anything to bring that about.
Each nation has declared that it will rejoin the agreement if the other does so first.
The United States has expressed willingness to meet and talk with Iran about resurrecting the agreement. But Iran has stuck by its refusal to meet with the Americans, adding that there is no need for any talks as all the Americans and Iranians need to do is go back to way things were in May 2018 before Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement.
But a big problem for both governments is the huge number of hardliners in both countries screaming against any resumption of the agreement. In Tehran, the hardliners who hold a big majority in the Majlis enacted a law in December that required Iran to cease adhering to the so-called “Additional Protocol” on February 23 if the Americans had not come back into compliance with the agreement by then.
The Additional Protocol is a supplement to Iran’s “safeguards” agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), allowing IAEA inspectors to get more information than the basic Safeguards agreement provides for.
The day before the deadline, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi flew to Tehran and negotiated a new arrangement. The text has not been released, but Grossi said a key part provides for television cameras in Iranian nuclear sites to continue taping. But instead of Iran giving the tapes to the IAEA every few days, Iran will lock up the tapes for three months. If at the end of that time, the nuclear agreement has been re-started, the IAEA will get the tapes. Otherwise, Iran will erase them.
The Additional Protocol also provides for the IAEA to make “snap” inspections of nuclear sites that is, visits that are not pre-announced to Iran. That provision will be suspended for the three months, but Grossi did not seem concerned about that. He said rather mysteriously that some form of such inspections would continue, though “not the same” as before. He didn’t elaborate further and Iran has said nothing about these inspections.
This arrangement incensed the hardliners in the Majlis. Mojtaba Zolnour, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs committee, demanded that President Rohani be prosecuted for reaching an agreement that he said violated the law approved by the Majlis demanding that Iran no longer abide by the Additional Protocol.
The overwhelming majority of the deputies voted that the deal struck with the IAEA was “a clear violation” of the Majlis statute because Iran would continue videotaping the nuclear operations, which is called for in the Additional Protocol. The vote demanded that Rohani and all others involved in the agreement with the IAEA be turned over to the Judiciary for prosecution.
The EU took another tack to try to resolve the Iran-US confrontation. The EU signers of the nuclear deal invited Iran and the United States to come to Europe and meet “informally” with the other signers of the agreement to work out a way to get the train back on the tracks. There were suggestions that each country could resume parts of the agreement in a step-for-step process, with, say, Iran removing some of its centrifuges while the United States lifted some sanctions.
The United States agreed within hours to attend such an “informal” meeting. Within a few days, Iran refused to go along with any “informal” meeting to the surprise and irritation of the French, British and Germans.
Before Iran spoke out, the Russian ambassador to the UN, Mikhail Ulyanov, welcomed the US decision and said, “Childish disputes about who must make the first step are absolutely counterproductive.”
Over the previous weeks since the Biden Administration took office, the United States has made several small changes that seemed to be designed to signal to Iran that it was ready to change the way the United States dealt with Iran. None of the changes got much public attention.
For example, the United States formally killed a Trump Administration decree from September that said all UN sanctions on Iran, which had been lifted by the nuclear deal, had been re-imposed or “snapped back.” That Trump proclamation had been rejected by the UN Security Council and uniformly ignored by the rest of the world. The Biden withdrawal of that proclamation was thus a diplomatic nicety only. But the Islamic Republic wouldn’t accept even that. Mahmud Vaezi, Rohani’s chief of staff, said the US announcement was just an admission by the US that its policy had failed.
More substantively, the US also dropped restrictions Trump had placed on Iranian diplomats at the UN. Trump had limited their travel to six blocks around the UN, the ambassador’s residence and the airport tighter restrictions than ever placed on any other diplomats. Biden returned the travel rule to the one routinely used with diplomats from hostile states (e.g., North Korea), allowing them to go no farther than 25 miles (40 kilometers) from the UN without advance permission from the State Department.
Others suggested that Washington could signal Iran more substantively by withdrawing its veto of an International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan to Iran; Iran has requested $5 billion. Another suggestion is to unfreeze Iranian funds that are locked up in other countries, like South Korea, Japan, India and China.
But while Washington was making small, token concessions to try to appease Tehran, some group in Iraq began launching rocket attacks on Americans. It would be hard to find anyone who did not believe the attacks were by Iraqi Shiite militiamen put up to it by Iran. Iran denied any involvement. And an announcement by a new militia or at least a new name for a militia, Saraya Olia ad-Dam claimed to have no links to Iran.
The Biden Administration eventually decided to bomb buildings used by the Iraqi militias in Syria. (See accompanying story on page one.)
In political terms, however, the militia rocket attacks make it harder for the US government to make any concessions to Tehran. US hardliners will tell the American people that Biden is caving into Iranian pressure.
It isn’t clear if Iran understands that. The official rhetoric holds that Iran defeated the Trump Administration’s sanctions pressure by standing strong in the face of Trump’s pressures until the American voters ousted him. Now, the rhetoric goes, all that is left is for the new US administration to recognize reality and return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. While that is nothing but rhetoric, it is being repeated so often by so many officials in Iran that many suspect they have deluded themselves and really believe the Americans have no other choice.
Clearly, however, there are sophisticated people in Iran who know the rhetoric is hollow and unhelpful. But those people like the more sophisticated policy officials in Washington are fearful of the hardliners who actually believe their own rhetoric. That is a prescription for inaction on both sides.
The challenge for the immediate future is to find a new prescription that both sides can agree on and that both sides can sell to the hardliners in their society.
The Europeans are clearly very displeased with what Iran is doing. German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said, “The more pressure that is applied, the more difficult it gets to find a political solution.” He added that talks “are being significantly complicated at the moment because Iran obviously does not seek de-escalation but escalation and this is playing with fire.”
Earlier, Iranian Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi stirred the pot by warning the West that Iran could build a nuclear weapon if sanctions on Tehran remain in place. This was startling because a 1990s fatwa, or religious edict, by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi states flatly that nuclear weapons are forbidden.
“Our nuclear program is peaceful and the fatwa by the Supreme Leader has forbidden nuclear weapons, but if they push Iran in that direction, then it wouldn’t be Iran’s fault but those who pushed it,” Alavi was quoted as saying.
“If a cat is cornered, it may show a kind of behavior that a free cat would not,” he added, saying Iran has no plans to move toward a nuclear weapon under current circumstances.
The US did not erupt. State Department officials pointed out that Alavi only said what Iran could do. Khamenehi did not say anything, hinting that Alavi’s statement was a pre-planned remark planned by the regime to try to scare the West. It didn’t work as all countries ignored it, treating the comment as mere rhetoric.
Iranian officials did not repeat the threat, and the episode was reduced to footnote status.
Separately, Khamenehi said that Iran could rescind its cap on not enriching uranium beyond 20 percent. He said Iran could enrich uranium up to 60 percent, if it needed to. US officials dismissed that comment as well. They avoided saying the only reason to enrich uranium to that high a level would be to speed the way to weapons-grade uranium.
Khamenehi’s only other comment in recent weeks was to say that it was the “final policy” of the Islamic Republic that Iran will not talk to the United States about anything until sanctions are lifted.