Iran nuclear deal to be revived
Source: By Mira Patel: The Indian Express
Western diplomats have set a deadline of March 2022 to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, signed under President Barack Obama, and dismantled in 2018 by President Donald Trump.
American officials are concerned about Iran’s rapid nuclear escalation after the US abandoned the deal, and President Joe Biden has said that the US will rejoin the agreement if Iran complies with the terms of the original deal, and if it addresses other issues related to alleged ballistic missile stockpiles and the proxy conflicts that it backs across the region.
Iran has rejected any deadline imposed by the West, and President Ebrahim Raisi, who is considered a hardliner, has said that “regional and missile issues are non-negotiable”. Unless negotiations progress substantively and soon, many Western diplomats fear the existing deal’s point of no return may come soon.
What was the 2015 Iran nuclear deal?
The deal, formally known as Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), is a landmark accord signed between Iran and a coalition of world powers including the US, the UK, China, Russia, France, and Germany (collectively known as P5+1).
The relatively moderate regime of President Hassan Rouhani agreed to dismantle much of Iran’s nuclear programme, and open its facilities to greater international monitoring. In return, the world powers agreed to lift many of the sanctions imposed on the country, opening its economy to billions of dollars of lost revenue.
The world powers wanted to restrict Iran’s nuclear capabilities to the point that it would take Tehran at least a year to build a weapon, giving them adequate time to prepare and respond. Before the agreement, analysts estimated that Iran had reached a point from where it could build a weapon in approximately three months.
While the terms of the agreement were complex, in essence, they focused on eliminating Iran’s stockpiles of enriched uranium and plutonium (needed to produce a nuclear weapon), and on limiting the number and type of centrifuges Iran could operate.
Tehran also agreed to implement a protocol that would allow inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to access its nuclear sites to ensure Iran would not be able to develop nuclear weapons in secret. However, many of the JCPOA’s restrictions have expiration dates, something that the opponents of the deal flagged.
While the West agreed to lift sanctions related to Iran’s nuclear proliferation, other sanctions addressing alleged abuses of human rights and Tehran’s ballistic missile programme remained in place. The US committed to lifting sanctions on oil exports, but continued to restrict financial transactions, which have deterred international trade with Iran.
Nonetheless, Iran’s economy, after suffering years of recessions, currency depreciation, and inflation, stabilised significantly after the deal took effect, and its exports skyrocketed.
Israel, America’s closest ally in the Middle East, strongly rejected the deal, and other countries like Iran’s great regional rival Saudi Arabia, complained that they were not involved in the negotiations even though Iran’s nuclear programme posed security risks for every country in the region.
Critics also point out that since 2015, Iran has increased its support for regional proxies, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which the US has designated a terrorist organisation, has expanded its activities. However, backers of the deal believe that it succeeded in its main objective, which was to contain Iran’s nuclear capabilities.
After Trump abandoned the deal and reinstated banking and oil sanctions, Iran ramped up its nuclear programme in earnest, returning to approximately 97 per cent of its pre-2015 nuclear capabilities.
What happened after the US pulled out of the deal?
In April 2020, under Trump’s presidency, the US announced its intention to snap back sanctions. However, the other partners objected to the move, stating that since the US was no longer part of the deal, it could not unilaterally reimpose sanctions.
Initially following the withdrawal, several countries continued to import Iranian oil under waivers granted by the Trump administration. A year later, the US ended the waivers to much international criticism and, by doing so, significantly curbed Iran’s oil exports.
The other powers, in an attempt to keep the deal alive, launched a barter system known as INSTEX to facilitate transactions with Iran outside the US banking system. However, INSTEX only covered food and medicine, which were already exempt from US sanctions.
Despite the efforts of the US’s allies, therefore, the deal was essentially dead — and Tehran made no effort to hide its unhappiness. It accused the US of reneging on its commitments, and blamed Europe for capitulating to US unilateralism. As Iran proceeded to ramp up its nuclear capabilities, in 2020, tensions reached a boiling point following a series of US attacks on Iranian national security interests.
In January, after the US assassinated the top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, Iran announced that it would no longer limit its uranium enrichment. In October, it began constructing a centrifuge production centre in Natanz to replace the one that had been destroyed months earlier in an attack that was blamed on Israel. The following year, Iran announced new restrictions on the IAEA’s ability to inspect facilities, and later ended its monitoring agreement with the agency.
Trump had claimed he would get Iran back to the negotiating table and force it to accept harsher terms. Instead, Iran was able to double down on its nuclear and military activities in the region, and evade sanctions by smuggling oil to buyers including China. Still, the new US sanctions hit the Iranian economy hard, leading to a wave of protests across the country.
What geopolitical considerations would drive the deal going forward, if it were to be revived?
Any nuclear deal would come with a host of geopolitical considerations on both sides. The US would have to factor in not only Iran’s nuclear programme but also its increasingly hostile behaviour in the region. It would also have to take into consideration the reality of the new multipolar world, in which its unilateral leadership is no longer guaranteed. In its efforts to revive the deal, the US would have to deal with Russia and China, countries with which its relations are especially tense and rancorous right now.
Iran, for its part, would have to consider the rapidly changing dynamics in the Middle East, given that Israel has recalibrated its relations with several Middle Eastern Arab countries in recent years. With Saudi Arabia too signalling a willingness to change old positions, the Middle Eastern chessboard now looks significantly different from a few years ago.
Internal political dynamics in both Iran and the US will have a role to play. It has been reported that the move towards reviving the deal was progressing well until the election of Raisi in June 2021. The President has taken a hard position that the US should lift most sanctions against Iran in exchange for nuclear compliance — a demand that the Americans have discounted.
On the other hand, the US itself is deeply polarised on a range of issues including questions around its relationship with Iran, and all parties in the negotiations will be wary of a change in the composition of Congress later this year, and possibly of a Republican President returning to the White House in 2024.
