TEHRAN — Paul R. Pillar, a retired CIA officer, has said U.S. President Donald Trump needs to make a significant change in his Iran policy in order to succeed, arguing that hints of such change have already appeared.
In a piece published on The National Interest, Pillar said abandoning of the Iran nuclear deal, also known as the JCPOA, was motivated by the identification of Barack Obama with the accord.
“That the agreement was a signal foreign policy accomplishment of this Democratic president was reason enough to try to destroy it,” he said.
He also argued that the Islamic Republic has responded to the U.S. policy of maximum pressure with “pressure of its own.”
“If the U.S. administration wants more out of Iran, it will have to agree to more of what Iran wants,” said Pillar, the author of Why America Misunderstands the World.
Excerpts of the piece are presented below:
IN ABANDONING the nuclear deal with Iran, the Trump administration disrupted an international consensus on how to deal with Tehran. U.S. policy toward Iran will now be a story of attempted recovery from the failures of that disruption. Domestic politics drove the original decision to confront Iran, and domestic politics, in an election year, will shape Donald Trump’s attempts at avoiding war. Any hope of salvaging success will require significant change in Trump’s policy, some hints of which have already appeared.
The Trump administration’s reneging, beginning in 2018, on U.S. obligations under the JCPOA was foreshadowed by earlier Republican attempts during the Obama administration to sabotage the negotiation of the agreement. Both the earlier sabotage and the later reneging were motivated by the identification of Barack Obama with the JCPOA. That the agreement was a signal foreign policy accomplishment of this Democratic president was reason enough to try to destroy it. A complementary motivation was opposition to the agreement by the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu, whose unrelenting push to keep Iran ostracized served several political purposes, including promoting Israel’s relations with the [Persian] Gulf Arab monarchies and diverting international attention from Israel’s own policies.
'If there is no U.S.-Iranian agreement before the U.S. presidential election of 2020, the prospects for such an accord would be better after the election.'
Vague references to a “better deal” did not clarify the Trump administration’s desired end game. Different players in the administration had differing desires. Especially evident was a division between Trump, who wants deals, and his former National Security Advisor John Bolton, who always wanted a war. For a while after the initial reneging in mid-2018, the differences did not seem to matter. As U.S. violations of the JCPOA escalated into unrestricted economic warfare against Iran, the administration pointed to the significant damage inflicted on the Iranian economy as if that were ipso facto a positive achievement. The administration took satisfaction in how the private sector’s fear of losing access to U.S. markets undermined European governments’ efforts to circumvent secondary U.S. sanctions. The administration’s policies did not even seem to dent the existing nuclear restrictions on Iran. For a year after the United States reneged on the JCPOA, Iran—reaffirming its commitment to the agreement and expressing its desire for full compliance with it—continued to observe its own obligations under the accord.
By mid-2019, however, it was impossible to ignore how the “maximum pressure” campaign was failing on every front. Iran’s patience ran out when the Trump administration ended the last of the waivers of sanctions it had placed on purchasers of Iranian oil. Tehran then began a series of small, incremental moves beyond the JCPOA’s limits on the amount of enriched uranium that Iran could stockpile and the level of enrichment. Using the same strategy it employed before the JCPOA was negotiated, Tehran gradually ramped up its nuclear activity to pressure the United States and other foreign states to negotiate seriously about sanctions relief. Iran, in other words, has been responding to maximum pressure with pressure of its own.
With each of its incremental steps, Iran has emphasized that what it has done is easily reversible and that its objective is a return of everyone to full compliance with the JCPOA. Iran will continue the gradual expansion of its nuclear program as long as the maximum pressure campaign continues.
One reason the economic and political results inside Iran have not been what the authors of maximum pressure may have hoped for is that Iran—no stranger to hardship in time of war or sanctions—has had some success in sustaining its “resistance economy” at a stable, albeit much lower than desired, level. Rouhani was able to point to some signs of this—such as the fact that the non-oil part of Iran’s gdp has increased in recent months—in his speech in September to the United Nations General Assembly. Despite the overall contraction of the Iranian economy over the past year, it still is larger than it was when the JCPOA went into effect in 2015. The International Monetary Fund estimates that contraction of the Iranian economy will stop and small growth will resume in 2020. The value of the rial relative to the U.S. dollar has gained appreciably since April 2019 and is well above its record low of September 2018.
Trump may not understand most of the reasons his Iran policy has not been working, and maybe he will not openly admit that failure. But he can see that it is failing. He is thinking of Iran policy not just in anti-Obama or pro-Likud terms, but also as an opportunity for a deal. He probably has concluded that he needs a deal with Iran because the other big items on his deal-making agenda—North Korea’s nuclear weapons and trade with China—have hit snags and have not yet furnished breakthroughs.
Freed of election-related dependence on financial backers firmly opposed to doing any business with Iran, Trump might be better able to focus on building a legacy of deals rather than of wars.
Among the indications that Trump has decided a change is necessary is his dismissal of Bolton in September 2019. Differences over North Korea and other issues also were involved, but Bolton was probably the single greatest impediment within the administration to any constructive dealings with Iran. Trump also has not stood in the way of French president Emmanuel Macron’s efforts to broker a de-escalation of U.S.-Iranian tensions. And Trump has been open about welcoming a presidential-level meeting with Iran.
The principal resistance to initiating U.S.-Iranian negotiations is currently on the Iranian side. Tehran has no interest in any meeting with Trump that would be little more than a photo op. Rouhani rebuffed Macron’s attempt to arrange at least a phone call with Trump on the fringes of the United Nations General Assembly session in September. Until current policies and circumstances change, meeting with the chief of maximum pressure would be a big political negative for Rouhani, as it would be for any other Iranian leader.
The Iranian leadership’s primary strategy regarding Trump has been to see him as an aberration that will pass—to outwait and outlast him. This was part of their thinking in continuing to observe the JCPOA nuclear limits for a year after Trump’s reneging on the agreement.
A major reason for Iranian diplomats to stand firm on issues related to the JCPOA is their knowledge that their side is the one in the right. It was the United States, not Iran, that reneged on its obligations. Iran’s incremental exceeding, after its year of patience, of some of the limits on uranium enrichment is technically not even a violation, given language in the JCPOA that—as Iranian officials take pains to point out—explicitly relieves Iran of its obligations if other parties do not live up to theirs.
As long as Trump is president, there will have to be just enough difference from what is on the books for him to be able to claim that the new deal is a vastly “better deal.” But if the U.S. administration wants more out of Iran, it will have to agree to more of what Iran wants. President Rouhani said so in his speech to the General Assembly, making clear that Iran would be satisfied with everyone returning to full compliance with the JCPOA but that “if you require more, you should also pay more.”
If there is no U.S.-Iranian agreement before the U.S. presidential election of 2020, the prospects for such an accord would be better after the election. This would most obviously be true if a Democrat unseats Trump, but the prospects conceivably might improve even in a second Trump term. Freed of election-related dependence on financial backers firmly opposed to doing any business with Iran, Trump might be better able to focus on building a legacy of deals rather than of wars.
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