The JCPOA - Its conception, near demise, and future
/By Govind Ramagopal, Research Fellow
I. The foundations of effective diplomacy
With the election of Barack Obama in 2008, there was hope in the US and around the globe that after years of war, not only would America pursue a more restrained posture towards the world, but towards the Middle East especially. Interest in President Obama’s election was high in Iran, and many warmly welcomed his victory as they felt it would mark a break from the Bush era. Throughout the campaign, the new President had stated on multiple occasions that he would pursue diplomacy with America’s adversaries, without preconditions, and this policy change included Tehran in its formulation. The appreciation of Obama’s victory even extended to the upper echelons of the Iranian government. The Speaker of the Majles, Ali Larijani said: “the Iranian government is leaning more in favor of Obama because he is more flexible and rational, even though we know America’s policy towards Iran won’t change much.” There was nevertheless an air of caution that pervaded both sides’ thinking, as the new American administration was on the other end of the ideological spectrum from the Ahmadinejad government that was steeped in a conservative worldview. Yet, President Obama continued his outreach to the Iranian people, and through those entreaties, to the regime itself. He was the first US president to mark the occasion of Nowruz, or Persian New Year, where he felicitated Iran’s rich history and remarked that “Iran could take its rightful place in the community of nations”.
Despite the initial feelings of goodwill, the regime, and Ayatollah Khamenei himself did not appear to respond favorably to the outreach, and by the beginning of the summer of 2009, it appeared as if the hope of six months earlier had evaporated after the disputed re-election of President Ahmadinejad. The Obama Administration carefully but resolutely denounced the ensuing crackdown and chaos that descended on Iran in June 2009; yet the Iranian government blamed the American administration’s rhetoric and tactics for instigating the protests and claimed it was trying to overthrow another Iranian government, just as it did in 1953. Despite the fact the US was not trying to unseat the incumbent rulers in Tehran, the messy outcome of the election forced Iran back to its default position status quo ante, of hostility towards the US. From the vantage point of the White House, any hope of a reset in relations with Iran was dead.
Another crucial development that in many respects set the course heading for the Obama Administration’s eventual pursuit of the JCPOA was the revelation of the Fordow enrichment plant in September 2009. The existence of the Fordow plant, near Qom, was divulged at the G20 Summit, by President Obama, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy. The three leaders declared that the Iranians had not been truthful with the West, and they stated that the layout and location of the plant was simply inconsistent with the infrastructure of a purely civilian program. The Federation of American Scientists released a statement a few months after the Fordow Facility was revealed to the world, which said: “the facility is far too small to be a commercial enrichment facility, raising additional concerns it could be used to produce highly enriched uranium”. However, the statement F.A.S. went on to say that the Fordow facility alone would not be enough to produce all the uranium needed for a nuclear weapon, and that it could indeed be part of a piece of general nuclear-related infrastructure.
However, the ambiguity around this latest development helped turn the US’ already seriously strained relationship with Iran to an even more acrimonious one. By the following year, it appeared that the US wanted to try and bring Iran to the negotiating table by applying what President Obama called “the toughest sanctions on Iran ever”. The sanctions passed by Congress in June 2010 made it harder for Iran to buy refined petroleum as well as the goods and services on the global market to service its oil-refining capabilities. The US sanctions targeted the oil sector because it was then, and is today, Iran’s economic mainstay, and financial lifeline.
What made the Obama Administrations efforts additionally successful was that it was able to coordinate its efforts to isolate Iran with its main adversaries, and veto-wielding members of the UN Security Council, Russia and China. The US was able to secure both Moscow and Beijing’s support to at least abstain from voting on UN Security Council Resolution 1929 that would have implemented additional UN sanctions on Iran’s nuclear program aside from those passed by the US Congress and the European Union. The effects of this coordinated effort were profound, as the value of the Iranian Rial fell 56% from January 2012 to January 2014, and the inflation rate reached 40% during the same period according to the Congressional Research Service. The economic difficulties that wracked Iran during the early 2010’s made the incumbent Ahmadinejad regime particularly unpopular, and his bravado and chauvinism could no longer be papered-over by Tehran’s ample oil revenues which were given away by a populist President as freebies to a loyal voting base. It appeared as if sanctions put Iran into the proverbial “corner”.
II. The election of President Hassan Rouhani and signing the JCPOA- Were the stars aligned?
With Iran’s economy in the doldrums and its leadership facing the ire of an increasingly frustrated population, it appeared clear that the Supreme Leader needed to escape from the trajectory his country was on, and by early 2013, a potential pathway was apparent. With a Presidential election due in June of that year, the Supreme Leader needed to assuage a restless population that their economic and social travails could be eased from within the political system. That is why a prominent moderate, Hassan Rouhani was allowed to run, and quite likely with the implicit understanding between his camp and the Supreme Leader that he could possibly win and be charged with implementing an agenda of economic resuscitation. It would be reasonable to assume that Ayatollah Khameinei felt that any potential threat to the essence of the regime from someone who led a coalition of moderate and reform minded voters, largely concentrated in large urban centers, was less than that posed by the poor economy. When Hassan Rouhani eventually declared victory, it was clear that his principal task was to bring about sanctions relief to Iran’s citizenry after years of multilateral sanctions severely stunting its economy. He knew that to credibly negotiate with the West, a series of quid pro quo exchanges needed to take place, and Iran would certainly need to make sacrifices to its uranium enrichment to obtain the sanctions relief it needed.
One would be tempted to ask why a country that categorically stated it was not building a nuclear weapon, paused the uranium enrichment program that Tehran stated was for non-nuclear purposes? The short answer could very well be that Tehran would have invited a prompt Israeli bombing raid on its nuclear facilities, which would have been inevitably backed by the U.S. Due to perpetual Israeli mistrust and often overheated rhetoric and panic about Iranian intentions, there was an overwhelming surge of political pressure on the Netanyahu government as well as the Obama Administration to attack Iran if Tehran’s uranium enrichment was not curbed. As a result, the risk of an all out war in the Middle East would have been in the offing, and by the Iranian leaderships’ calculation, it would have been one they would have not been likely to survive. During the negotiations, the fundamental consideration that Iran’s leaders made was that Tehran needed iron-clad guarantees on paper that it would receive the necessary sanctions relief to stave off economic disaster and a subsequent popular revolt that could destabilize or even overthrow the regime. If such guarantees were obtained, in exchange for short, medium (and certain long term) sacrifices to its enrichment capabilities that would be a price worth paying. As such, Iran entered into the JCPOA negotiations with a seriousness that wouldn’t have existed just six months before.
With the new Iranian government in place, the new foreign minister Javad Zarif, a highly seasoned, and American-educated diplomat was due to meet his American counterpart, John Kerry on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. This marked the formal start to the JCPOA talks, and over the next two months, the members of the P5+1 (The US, UK, France, Russia, China, and Germany) met to discuss the parameters of an agreement that would place limits on nuclear enrichment in exchange for sanctions relief. Finally, in November 2013, in Geneva, an interim deal (Joint Plan of Action), was reached where the parties agreed a series of concrete moves that would have: 1) stopped enrichment of 5%+ grade uranium, and converted 20% enriched uranium to oxide, 2) not increased the stockpile of low-enriched uranium, 3) frozen its enrichment capacity by not installing more centrifuges, 4) not furthered the development of the heavy water reactor at Arak, and 5) accepted more intrusive inspections at its nuclear facilities. This remarkable breakthrough was an incredible achievement for all parties, but particularly for the US and Iran, who had the most to gain and lose in these talks. The fact Iran had agreed so far to tangible restrictions on a nuclear program was a remarkable advancement in arms control. The interim agreement that was reached in Geneva represented a solid launching pad from which the P5+1 could progress to the more in-depth talks that would eventually result in the JCPOA two years later.
Over the next 18 months, the parties worked furiously to iron out the details on the interim agreement, in the hope that it would translate into a full-fledged deal that would be binding on all parties for years thereafter. Fortunately for Iran, the P5+1, the Middle East, and indeed the wider world, after many acrimonious negotiations, the parties did agree to the terms of a final deal that would be implemented as an executive agreement, and codified in the UN Security Council as Resolution 2231. The landmark agreement stuck to the broad framework that President Rouhani, President Obama, and the other five parties to the agreement drew up at the outset of negotiations in 2013. Unlike the interim agreement, the JCPOA laid out key timelines by which Iran would have to abide by for sanctions to be lifted by both the US and other members of the international community.
Iran first agreed to multiple inspections into its nuclear sites, and to limit its nuclear infrastructure, and the amount of uranium it could hold in stock. Tehran agreed to modernize the Arak Heavy Water reactor to be a sole-use reactor that could not enrich uranium to a nuclear grade. The agreement also mandated that any help that Iran needed to repurpose the Arak reactor to one that was compatible with a civilian program would be provided by the parties to the agreement. Annex I, Section B, Item 6 also underscored that the IAEA would monitor the reconversion process, and notify the Working Group of its progress, and ascertain whether the new reactor was consistent with the pre-approved final design. Furthermore, Annex 1, Section B, Items 10 and 11 stipulated that Iran would not be able to test or produce uranium pellets or firing pins, key items that are crucial in the process of creating highly enriched nuclear fuel, and all spent fuel from the Arak reactor would be shipped out of the country, to avoid the risk of it being reprocessed. In addition, in Annex 1, Section C, Items 14 and 15 stipulate that Iran would also have to ship all excess Heavy Water outside the country that was beyond the scope of what was needed for the redesigned Arak reactor, and that the entire inventory and reprocessing activities of the Iranian government with regards to its Heavy Water usage and export would be monitored by the IAEA. Perhaps two of the most important items in the entire agreement were located in Annex 1, Section F, Items 27 and 28, which stated: 1) Iran will keep its enrichment capacity at no more than 5060 IR-1 centrifuges in no more than 30 cascades at the Natanz facility for 10 years, and 2) that Iran could not maintain uranium beyond 3.67% enrichment for a period of 15 years.
With these firm restrictions on Iran’s physical nuclear infrastructure, the agreement also laid out which sanctions would be lifted that had prohibited Iran from accessing certain goods and services on the international market for years, if not decades. In Annex II Section A, the EU listed that it would remove sanctions on finance, the oil and gas sectors, shipping, gold and precious metals, software, arms, and asset freezes on entities like the Iranian Central Bank, and key individuals who were in violation of sanctions related to nuclear proliferation. Even more significantly, given the US’ status as the global superpower, its stated objective to remove sanctions on Tehran carried the most weight, and the measures that were itemized in the agreement were quite substantial, and if fully realized would have been a boon for Iran’s economy. In Annex II, Section B, much like the EU, the US agreed to lift sanctions on: the financial sector, insurance, the energy sector, shipping, gold and precious metals, software, the automobile sector, designated individuals, and to enact other trade measures such as allowing the sale of civilian aircraft and parts to Iran, which was of particular importance given Iran’s decaying and elderly civilian airline fleet. With all of these provisions providing the ballast to the JCPOA, the final element of the agreement was the establishment of a Joint Commission that would review the progress of implementation of the numerous items that underpinned the JCPOA, and would be comprised of representatives of all parties to the agreement.
The fact that the JCPOA was signed by the United States, Iran, along with the UK, France, Germany, Russia, and China represented a milestone in American (and global) diplomatic history, and marked a significant milestone with the other five countries that negotiated with Iran. But it underscored the opportunity for Washington and Tehran to move beyond the acrimonious and painful relationship they had endured for the previous 35 years ever since the Revolution, the Hostage crisis, and the Iran-Contra scandal. The agreement surely represented a marked change from the early days of the Bush Presidency, when a near-messianic desire to export democracy at the barrel of a gun trumped painstaking diplomacy as the preferred course of action to dealing with adversaries. The fact that the Obama Administration went against incredibly forceful opposition domestically from Congressional Republicans and some Democrats, lobbying organizations, and countries such as Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, showed that groundbreaking policy could be implemented if the right political coalitions are built, and those pushing the change are willing to see it through to completion. Once the agreement had begun to be implemented in full, as a result of Iran complying with its obligations, the US, EU, and UN responded by repealing sanctions, and there was a year long period where it looked as if relations between the West and Iran were going to be at their most cooperative both politically and economically since the Revolution in 1979.
III. The Trump Administration, the near demise of the JCPOA, and hope for its renewal
The election of Donald Trump in 2016 threatened to undo the incredibly hard won gains that were made with the passage of the JCPOA. Trump had consistently inveighed against the deal during the election campaign often calling it the “worst deal ever negotiated”. Yet, he appointed key members of his cabinet, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary James Mattis, who despite their reservations about certain aspects of the deal, recommended that Trump certify Iran’s compliance with the JCPOA because the deal was better than having Iran’s nuclear program be unsupervised. Despite begrudgingly doing so for the first year of his administration, hardliners around Trump, such as Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (who replaced Rex Tillerson earlier in 2018), convinced Trump to withdraw from the deal and pursue a policy of “Maximum Pressure” against Iran. The reaction of the remaining signatories to the deal, not least Iran, was incredibly negative, and there were serious concerns about whether Iran would stay in now that the deal’s principal architect had withdrawn. America’s allies and adversaries seriously questioned whether the U.S could be trusted as a negotiating partner, when one administration could simply shred any agreements made by a previous one. Trump’s action sowed confusion amongst allies and partners, and muddied America’s name on the world stage.
Despite Donald Trump’s obvious distaste for the nuclear agreement, it is hard to say whether he even knew the strategic considerations that underpinned it. Whether he withdrew from the deal based purely based on enmity towards his predecessor, his personal dislike of the Iranian regime because of his generations’ memories of the Hostage Crisis, or both, can only be determined by a Trump biographer or someone privy to those discussions. Trump’s singular act of pulling the U.S out of the deal set the Middle East and the rest of the world on a very dangerous trajectory, and the forces within Iran who opposed the JCPOA found renewed political strength with which to oppose it more intensely. Trump also lost even more of America’s moral authority with Iran’s younger generation as the nuclear deal was predicated on the Rouhani government being able to show members of Iran’s younger, educated, and largely urban middle class that the Islamic Republic could deliver a semblance of economic opportunity, and enact policies that could benefit them. Trump unwittingly pulled the proverbial rug from under that very demographic who would eventually take over Iran in another generation or two, much to their own, and also the West’s detriment.
The Trump Administration left diplomatic wreckage for the incoming Biden Administration to deal with, and as a result, the task of re-entering the nuclear deal is proving tougher than many thought. The Biden Administration is likely deeply reluctant to simply return to the existing structures of the JCPOA as a fait accompli because of hawkish political pressure being placed the administration, even from some Democrats. Additionally, there is a belief in some quarters of the administration, like National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan that Iran could even be strong-armed to come to the table to negotiate on its regional policy and ballistic missiles. In terms of narrowing the chasm between Washington and Tehran, it is curious that American officials like Mr. Sullivan have publicly discussed including prohibitions on Iran’s ballistic missiles, and ‘malign’ foreign activities in negotiations to reconstitute the JCPOA. It would be mistaken to make such a request because Iran has every reason to be concerned about attack from the outside, and as it has no strategic guarantor like Israel, Saudi Arabia, or the UAE in the form of the USA. It would be foolhardy for Iran to accede to any such prohibitions given that the Iranian leadership views its missile program and regional policy as a deterrent against attack from the Gulf monarchies or Israel. For example, Iran’s missile program could make Tel Aviv think twice about launching an air raid on one of its nuclear installations because Tehran’s ballistic missiles can reach Israeli cities, and its ally Hezbollah could also launch a military offensive against it from Lebanon if Iran were attacked.
Unlike giving up uranium enrichment capability, surrendering conventional weapons in the form of missiles and its ability to maneuver in the region and defend what it sees as its national interests is a non-starter for Tehran. Yet, despite Iran’s current leadership stating that they want to return to full compliance with the nuclear deal, there is concern amongst senior leaders in Tehran that simply returning to the status quo ante would make Iran lose face and damage the new Raisi Administration in the eyes of the Iranian public, who already view it with a higher degree of skepticism (as evidenced by the low turnout in the June election). Despite the difficulties of the ongoing negotiations, it would appear that both sides believe that it is in both Tehran’s and Washington’s interest to stay in the deal.
Conclusion
The stakes in the Middle East are enormously high at the moment. After the assassination of Qassem Soleimani in January 2020, the US and Iran came very close to an armed confrontation that could have swallowed the entire region. Luckily, both sides stepped back from the brink, but the taut state of affairs in the region has not changed for the better. Since the Biden Administration was sworn in, Iranian backed militia have stepped up their attacks on US forces in Iraq and Syria and Tehran has dug in its heels regarding the ongoing JCPOA negotiations. American officials have kept saying they have been trying to enact a more wide-ranging deal from the 2015 JCPOA because the regional context has shifted dramatically. While that is true on the surface, what Iran is willing to sacrifice in terms of any exchange has not increased over the last 18 months. It has likely shrunk. Tehran is not willing to be seen giving up more than it did in the original deal to a country that reneged on an earlier agreement that it signed. Given that a conservative administration has been sworn into office in Tehran, the Raisi camp along with Ayatollah Khamenei feel vindicated to a large extent, because they said the US could not be trusted to keep its end of the bargain, and in the end that is what materialized. For a more far reaching dialogue with Iran to commence, the US should largely re-instate the provisions of the 2015 deal as a trust building measure, while insisting on tighter guidelines for surrendering uranium and enrichment capacity that Iran has violated around the edges over the last two years. Once it has been verified Iran has stopped spinning centrifuges and disposed of highly enriched uranium beyond the limits stated in the 2015 agreement, a more substantive ‘regional’ dialogue should begin, and hopefully meaningful progress can be made on this front. Even if the JCPOA can be resurrected however, the longevity of any new iteration of the agreement will be in question because of the precedent Donald Trump set in withdrawing from executive agreements the U.S has signed. Given the animosity the Republican Party as a whole has towards the JCPOA, it is reasonable to expect any future Republican President would withdraw from the deal again, inserting a lot of inconsistency and unpredictability into an already volatile US-Iran relationship, and rendering almost worthless any U.S President’s long-term credibility.
