Biden stymied on Iran nuclear deal

IN PERSPECTIVE

After less than two months in office, it may be too early to draw any firm conclusions about American President Joe Biden’s approach to Iran, but one thing is clear -- the Middle East has transformed into a more volatile theatre due to his predecessor Donald Trump’s impetuous actions, leaving Biden’s pre-election commitment to a speedy resumption of the Iran nuclear deal, properly known as the JCPOA, gravely in doubt due to both American domestic and foreign policy considerations.

It was the US under Trump, and not Iran, that reneged on the JCPOA, breaking the agreement negotiated by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany, and later endorsed by the Security Council itself. Therefore, it is logical for Iran to require the sanctions imposed by Trump’s regime to be revoked before agreeing to negotiate. This action Biden has so far refused to take, giving rise to the view that Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates exercise undue influence on US policy. It is equally unreasonable for the US, Britain, France and Germany to require Iran, as a precondition, to roll back elements of its nuclear programme that were implemented after the American unilateral withdrawal from the agreement.

There has yet been no official communication between the Americans and Iranians. Tehran refused to attend a meeting sponsored by the three European signatories, and while Beijing might suggest an alternative forum, there is no clarity on this. Russia, with its own problems with Biden, is unlikely to be helpful in breaking the deadlock. Meanwhile, Biden has further provoked Iran with missile strikes on Iran-connected facilities in Syria, allegedly as retaliation for Iranian-sponsored attacks on America and its allies in Iraq.

There is a view in Washington circles that reviving the JCPOA will strengthen the hand of beleaguered Iranian moderates in the forthcoming May elections, but Biden’s team is disunited, unable to arrive at any coherent policies to achieve that goal. Minor actions such as loosening some visa and other restrictions on Iranian diplomats in New York will not suffice. Some in Biden’s team are concerned that the objectives of the original JCPOA were limited, while others, especially John Kerry, now in charge of climate change but who was a leading negotiator of the JCPOA in his previous capacity as Secretary of State, are committed to reviving the Obama-era deal. The Biden government is therefore confronted by a number of crosscurrents, including several of its own creation.

Biden’s entourage only reflects a similar disunity in American domestic politics on this issue. Bitter criticism against any revival or renegotiation will come from Republicans, almost unanimously opposed to a return to the JCPOA, and also from some Democrats, who criticised the agreement’s shortcomings in 2015. The weaknesses of the agreement, according to these critics, are short timelines on uranium enrichment, verification problems, and supposedly malign Iranian activities in the Middle East that are outside the parameters of the agreement -- concerns stoked by Saudi Arabia and UAE, while Israel is hyper-active in revealing information that purports to reveal a greater degree of Iranian non-compliance with the JCPOA than was supposed.

In Tehran, the Iranian negotiators are similarly under great pressure from domestic quarters not to yield any ground. When the West is guilty of human rights abuses in denying medical stores to Iran even to fight Covid-19, and the sanctions have imposed great hardships on the Iranian people, there is scant popular sympathy for resuming talks with the Americans. The Iranians have made it clear that the original JCPOA must be revived, and they will not agree to any renegotiation, at least for now.

The voluntary degree of access given to IAEA inspectors is domestically challenged, and only an eleventh-hour Iran-IAEA agreement that allows the nuclear watchdog agency access to video recordings of facilities, conditional on the US returning to the deal within three months, has bought some time. Reports suggest that Iranian hardliners are very likely to win the presidential elections, in which event experienced Iranian JCPOA negotiators like President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Zarif will be replaced.

Given all these contradictory factors, it is hard to see how Biden can fulfill his pre-election commitment to return to the JCPOA without first at least giving Iran some sanctions relief and thereby surrendering a degree of American leverage. Washington might, however, concede the point, since they fear Iran’s capability on the uranium enrichment front.

Irrespective of Israel’s known nuclear weapon capacity, to which the Americans and their allies choose to turn a blind eye, Biden will rightly be concerned that if the Iranians were to possess fissile material sufficient to make a nuclear weapon, the unwelcome alternatives will be a Middle East war or the end of the US non-proliferation policy.

(The writer is a former foreign secretary)