The Administration’s Futile Flailing On Iran

by Paul R. Pillar

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This week the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) convened at the request of the Trump administration to discuss Iran’s nuclear activities. There is no action that, according to the IAEA’s charter and terms of reference, can or should come out of this discussion. The IAEA’s board is not the forum to discuss compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), also known as the Iran nuclear deal. That is the role of a joint commission established by the JCPOA. But the United States has not been a part of that body ever since the administration reneged on U.S. obligations under the JCPOA and decided it didn’t want anything to do with the agreement.

The IAEA board would be the proper forum to discuss any problems regarding Iran living up to its commitments to the agency on nuclear safeguards, including providing international inspectors with agreed access. But there are no such problems. All indications are that Iran is in full compliance with its commitments regarding international inspections and monitoring of its program.

The administration went to the IAEA board in order to be seen doing something about an Iranian nuclear issue the administration itself has stirred up, and it has no better ideas on what to do. It is flailing in trying to get out of a box of its own making, and it sees no way to get out—other than the way it refuses to admit, which would be to reverse its own action that built the box in the first place. Everything else that has ensued in what has become perceived as a nuclear crisis with Iran is clearly, wholly, directly, and unsurprisingly the result of the Trump administration reneging on U.S. obligations under the JCPOA. Before that action—and even for a year after that action—Iran was fully complying, as IAEA inspectors have certified, with the agreement’s strict limitations on its nuclear program.

The flailing was reflected in a tweet about Iran from President Trump on the day of the IAEA meeting in which he promised, “Sanctions will soon be increased, substantially!”  Even if more sanctions were somehow to provide a way out of the mess—rather than, as all experience strongly suggests, pushing Iran to ramp up its own counterpressure—the administration already has been pressing on this front so long and so hard that there is hardly anything left in the Iranian economy to sanction. The tweet also contains some of the usual falsehoods about the JCPOA—that Iran is “secretly” enriching uranium, that the “150 billion dollar deal” will “expire in a short number of years,” and so forth. All that responsible observers and organizations can do is patiently point out the falsehoods and restate the truth about the agreement.

It’s not only Trump’s tweets that involve throwing everything up on a wall and seeing what sticks. The White House press secretary issued a statement last week that declared, “We must restore the longstanding nonproliferation standard of no enrichment for Iran.”  There is no such standard. The tight limitations that the JCPOA placed on Iran’s enrichment of uranium are unique to that agreement and Iran and are more restrictive than any other international standard. But that wasn’t even the most absurd sentence in the White House’s statement. Instead it was this line: “There is little doubt that even before the deal’s existence, Iran was violating its terms.”

If there is any strategy in play here, it evidently is to repeat such nonsense enough times to cause people to lose sight of the fact that it was the United States, not Iran, that violated the JCPOA. As the agreement itself makes explicit in paragraphs 26 and 36, failure of one party to live up to the agreed terms is sufficient grounds for other parties to consider themselves released from their own obligations under the deal.

The administration’s most recent exclamations about Iran creeping above some of the JCPOA limits underscore how useful and important the JCPOA’s provisions have been. This is true of the comprehensive and intrusive monitoring by the IAEA, which may be the single most valuable feature of the agreement and is a provision that never expires. Because of this monitoring arrangement, no one has had to trust what the Iranians have said about what they are doing in the way of uranium enrichment. The international inspectors have been able to confirm it within a day.

It is self-contradictory, of course, for an administration that has spared no effort in berating the JCPOA and its terms to start expressing great concern about Iran no longer conforming completely with those same terms. Evidently the limits the JCPOA established are useful and important after all, despite what the administration had long been trying to get people to believe.

There is every indication that Iran’s small, incremental, publicly announced, and very reversible exceeding of enrichment limits is designed as counterpressure aimed at restoring complete compliance with the JCPOA. There is no indication that it reflects any reversal of Iran’s prior strategic decision to seek participation in the community of nations as an unsanctioned, non-nuclear-weapons state. In any event, thanks to the terms of the JCPOA, even the recent exceeding of enrichment limits need not raise any alarms about an Iranian nuclear weapon being imminent. Iran is nowhere close to being able to construct such a weapon even if it chose today to do so, and that is because of how far the JCPOA shoved such a weapon out of reach. Inching over a 300-kilogram limit for low enriched uranium is trivial compared to the far larger stockpile of the stuff Iran had when the JCPOA was negotiated, 98 percent of which Iran had to get rid of as a condition for sanctions relief. And that was only one of the several comparably major steps Iran was required to take under the agreement to close all possible pathways to a nuclear weapon.

Trump can still get out of the mess he created if he admits, even if only to himself, that accepting something very close to the JCPOA is the only way out. Otherwise, expect nothing good to come out of an administration posture based on a desire to destroy whatever Trump’s predecessor did, a subcontracting of the administration’s Middle East policies to regional rivals of Iran who have their own reasons to keep it permanently ostracized, and an obsession about Iran that is blatantly inconsistent with the standards the administration applies to other foreign policy problems.

Russia commends Iran’s patience in JCPOA’s implementation after US exit

Russia praises Iran’s “patience” in fulfilling its commitments under a 2015 multilateral nuclear agreement following Washington’s much-criticized exit from the landmark deal, saying Tehran’s “responsible approach” merits respect.

The comments were made by Moscow’s delegation to the Third Session of the Preparatory Committee for the 2020 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) at the UN headquarters in New York, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.

Moscow further said Iran chose to exercise “patience” and “restraint” and adopt a “responsible approach to fulfilling its obligations, despite constant provocations and blackmail,” adding that Tehran’s stance deserves to be “commended and respected,” the statement added.

It also emphasized that Iran’s “successful” implementation of the deal’s nuclear provisions is a “crucial contribution” to strengthening the nuclear non-proliferation regime.

Elsewhere in the statement, Russia welcomed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)’s “professional and impartial” approach in carrying out inspections of Iranian nuclear sites as part of the implementation of the nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan Action (JCPOA).

Since the JCPOA’s conclusion almost four years ago, the IAEA regularly verified that Iran has continued to strictly comply with the restrictions on its nuclear activities under the nuclear deal, including by proactively providing the UN nuclear agency’s inspectors with access to all nuclear facilities, it added.

In a quarterly report in February, the IAEA once again reaffirmed Iran's compliance with its nuclear-related commitments under the JCPOA, even as the United States re-imposed sanctions against Tehran.

A recipe for disaster or a path towards World Peace?

By Eisa Kameli

New York - On May 8, 2018, President Trump officially announced his decision to exit the “Iran Deal” known as the JCPOA – Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – that was struck between Iran and P5+1 in 2015. The U.S. President’s view of this deal, considered from his very initial comments as a presidential candidate, served as a great indicator of the new U.S. administration’s broader change of course with regards to the conduct of diplomacy that would be sought under his leadership; a so- called direction that needs to be dealt with in a precise way.

Ever since he took office, Trump has continuously proven his commitment to getting results that are as closely aligned with the promises he made to the American voters as possible. In doing so, he has demonstrated a lack of reverence for any kind of international framework that he deems as standing in his way. The disregard for the WTO’s regulations and standards, the unilateral and hasty negotiations with the North Korean Leadership, Kim Jong Un, and the non-compliance to the Iranian deal witnessed from the United States in the past two years serve as cases in point.

With regards to Iran, the U.S. administration has repeatedly stated that the president is deeply skeptical of the potential of the JCPOA to prevent its government from obtaining a nuclear weapon and gravely threatening its closest allies within the region and beyond. The President himself has never shied away from calling the deal “terrible” or “ridiculous.” Their underlying theory seems to lie on the premise that no two nations can make a deal together on one issue and, meanwhile, resume fighting on other, possibly related, fundamental sources of rift.

While the Obama administration fervently believed in and was proud of the verification mechanisms that were set out within this agreement, this latest outlook of the new administration rests on the conviction that as long as the atmosphere filling the gap between the two parties is filled with tension, the level of verifications set out is essentially irrelevant and what matters at the end of the day is either side’s commitment to getting the upper hand as the conflict goes on. Such argument, while rejects current model of peaceful settlement of related disputes, is unable to offer a serious and real alternative initiative.

Implications on Iran

In accordance with the White House’s goal-oriented and absolutist perspective of foreign policy described above, on August 6, 2018, the administration announced the reimposition of the first part of the sanctions lifted under the nuclear agreement with Iran. Under the new sets of sanctions, the trade of U.S. dollar, Iran’s Rial, gold, automotive parts and technology, aircraft, and industrial metals are prohibited from being conducted with Iran. At the same time, starting from a few weeks prior to this date, the president began sending multiple signals, through his press conference as well his widely-followed Tweets, about his openness to engage in discussion with the Iranian officials.

Iran, on the other hand, considered these calls for meetings nothing more than a ruse by Trump to boost up his administration’s legitimacy and gain followers around the world in his call for sanctions. With the distrust between the two nations being at its highest, the prospects for a new round of negotiations to begin between Iran and the U.S., as the White House has asked for are bleak, at least in the short-term. This new status quo, while seemingly successful in entangling Iran with internal problems so much as to discourage them from their overseas ambitions, will have consequences in the long run that will make peace in the Middle East even less attainable.

The US unilateral sanctions just started to kick in and countries as well as international companies around the world will most likely opt for leaving Iran’s markets as opposed to having to leave that of America – which is what will happen if they do not abide by the sanctions. On August 7, 2018 Trump, in his tweet, followed the course that George W. Bush suggested a decade ago. Trump said “anyone doing business with Iran will not be doing business with the United States.” All the while, the Iranian people will begin having an increasingly harder time gaining access to basic essential products such as food, medicine, and medical devices as indirect consequences of the financial restrictions imposed on those doing business with this country.

The Trump doctrine of exerting “maximum pressure” and maintaining hard rhetoric until the target country is willing to give in to his demands appears to overlook an important element within the Iranian culture. While it may seem that these increasing hardships will put pressure on the Iranian Government both from within and from the international community to re-initiate talks with the U.S., it is also quite likely that, in accordance with the ideology of resistance that a large portion of the country so enthusiastically cherishes, Iran pursues its path with added conviction. The inhumane, internationally recognized illegitimate and unjust nature of these sanctions can well contribute to the alienation of a whole new generation of Iranians towards the West, particularly the United States.

The fact is that there is a serious question about the effectiveness and productivity of a policy to exert maximum pressure on Iranians because of the changing nature of reasons and causes of US arguments after withdrawal from the JCPOA. Now, the people of Iran rightly blame the US administration for its non-compliance and insistence of pursuing deep enmity and that leads them to be more cautious in dealing with immoral US standards that has recently been witnessed. Moreover, Iran now is in a better position internationally than the Trump administration. The international community recognize that Iran has been honest with the IAEA and fully committed to the provisions of the JCPOA. In contrast, as Iran’s Ambassador to the UN stated in an article published by the Guardian (August 8, 2018), the Trump administration’s sanctions against Iran are a clear breach of UN Security Council resolution 2231 which underlines “promoting and facilitating the development of normal economic and trade contacts and cooperation with Iran” as an essential part of the JCPOA and calls upon all member states to support its implementation, including to ensure Iran’s access in areas of trade, technology, finance and energy, and refrain from actions that undermine it.

In addition, Iran’s upholding of its citizens’ human rights for which the Trump administration seems to be concerned with will not improve under the new wave of sanctions and rising hostility. The new status is likely to prompt Iran to gradually shift from a more democratic government to a kind with a national economic emergency. This can potentially lead to the further undermining of Iranians’ human rights.

Accordingly, the inherent contradictions that exist in President Trump’s pursuit of negotiations through force is helping the Iranian Government in reunifying the masses against the United States and obtaining more support from the international community. The Trump administration appears to be confident that this set of sanctions matched with the second set that is to be implemented in November which will be targeting Iran’s oil industry and Central Bank will be sufficient to bring them to the table. However, given the inherent problems of the sanctions and the lack of international will and determination to support the U.S., the prospects of the administration reaching its objectives are very unclear.

It is now time to wait and see how each side will endeavor to tip the scales in their own favor as they try to prove their might and righteousness. With the European Union, China and Russia all the more committed to respecting the nuclear deal, can the United States gather enough forces to make the sanctions effective? Does the United States have any concrete plans to gain the trust of the Iranian people and convince them of the benefits that a new deal with the new administration will ensue? On the other hand, has the Iranian Government prepared itself for the upcoming sanctions? Do they possess enough resources within their country and with their allies to counter the effects of the sanctions? Are the Iranian people ready for another round of an economic marathon with the United States?

These are questions that will be answered in the upcoming months and years. The fact remains that unless both sides come up with new approaches to find a way to resolve the outstanding issues, the stagnant and, occasionally, downhill state of affairs between the two countries will remain as is. Accordingly, the Trump administration, in its alleged pursuit of pragmatic solutions, needs to take lessons from previous U.S. administrations when it comes to Iran and initiate a revision of its preconditions and goals such that they are based on mutual respect and common interests, including going back to the JCPOA. Without such measures, the future of the Middle East will become even more obscure.