GARY GRAPPO
OPINION – The Biden administration faces an important decision point in its negotiations with Iran over rejoining the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Decisions made now and the signals they send to Tehran will determine whether the two sides can reach an agreement. They also will determine whether any such agreement, if concluded, can outlast Mr. Biden’s administration.
After months, the negotiations have now come to a standstill, presumably to give the newly elected president of Iran, Ebrahim Raisi, and his cabinet time to review progress and potential new directions. Considerable progress had reportedly been made before the Iranian team called off talks in June.
However, subsequent events also have altered the circumstances surrounding the negotiations for the US side. Interpreting those events, as in many things Iranian, is problematic. Three in particular, stand out.
First, there is the (predictable) election of Mr. Raisi, a notable hardliner, as Iran’s new president. With his elevation to the presidency, hardliners effectively control all the decision-making bodies of the Iranian government for the first time since 1988. Hardliners’ positions, especially those of the Supreme Leader and the IRGC, on the US and the JCPOA – uniformly negative – are well known. But at least under the previous president, Hassan Rouhani, there was a willing participant in the negotiations. Mr. Rouhani is now relegated to the traditional obscurity of former presidents in post-revolution Iranian politics, deprived of voice and influence.
Second, Supreme leader Ali Khamenei, has vacillated at times as to the utility of a renewed JCPOA but his views now seem to have hardened on a renewed JCPOA. This may be in response to some of the demands sought by the US side, e.g., extending the sunset clauses on Iran’s nuclear program and incorporating important references to regional security. As recently as late July and only days before the inauguration of the new president, Khamenei publicly asserted that, “Trust with the West does not work,” a seeming repudiation of the original JCPOA and a presumed message to his new president on a renewed agreement. Other senior officials have voiced similar reservations about the JCPOA dating back to the Obama administration, but none more clear than the Supreme Leader’s.
Third, in what might be interpreted as a response to the regional security concerns of the US and its regional allies, Iran carried out attacks against two commercial vessels in the vital Strait of Hormuz. One attack on an Israeli-owned tanker killed two European seamen aboard. The Strait of Hormuz represents one of the global economy’s most critical choke points. With these attacks, Iran seemed to be saying, “No place is off limits,” effectively doubling down on its existing destabilizing actions throughout the region, including in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon and elsewhere.
What does all of this mean for the US negotiating team and Mr. Biden? There are two possibilities.
The first is that Iran is resorting to a shopworn ploy of its negotiating history: abruptly leave negotiations just as the two parties approach a conclusion and then sow havoc elsewhere. The Iranians want to project looming pessimism for the future of the negotiations and reinforce that with threatening behavior elsewhere. The objective is to rattle the adversary into making further concessions in order to quell its apparent dejection and entice them back to the bargaining table.
Few of Iran’s negotiating adversaries have fallen for this juvenile antic. The US won’t either. It should stand firm on its position and await an eventual Iranian return to Vienna and then drive forcefully toward a new JCPOA that meets US objectives.
However, there is a second possibility and one the US must seriously consider, regardless of Iranian intent. For this, it’s important to bear in mind the administration’s most important political criterion in evaluating any decision on domestic or foreign policy. Does it protect the Democratic Party’s slim majorities in the House and Senate in the lead-up to the mid-term elections in the fall of 2022? Today, given the political polarization in the country, it is the only yardstick for measuring policy decisions.
Foreign policy rarely is a major factor in midterm elections. But Iran and the JCPOA are different. On top of what may become a Taliban rout in Afghanistan after the US withdrawal, a flawed renewed JCPOA would be more than enough for Republicans to attack Democratic candidates and their party’s failed foreign policy. Being tagged as “soft on Iran” carries the same political death sentence as “soft on communism” did during the Cold War.
The latter is especially important because a significant majority – 80-88 percent – of Americans has consistently held highly negative views of the Islamic Republic as far back as, well, the 1979 revolution itself. For Mr. Biden, producing anything less than an incontrovertibly airtight renewed JCPOA that is also acceptable to Israel and America’s Gulf allies, would present an open invitation for Republican criticism and even some backpedaling by Democratic candidates seeking to distance themselves from a perceived bad policy.
Both Iran and the US say they want an enduring JCPOA. Tehran has stipulated it wants an agreement from which no US president could withdraw, an impossible demand under the US governing system. Joe Biden also wants an agreement inoculated from the fate of Barack Obama’s short-lived agreement.
As mentioned earlier, that means considerably extended sunsets for Iran’s nuclear program development and constraints on Iran’s mischief-making throughout the region. There are additional concerns: Iran’s having exceeded existing JCPOA production and technology constraints, its expanding ballistic missile program and imprisoned Americans in Iran. These are concrete sine qua non for a durable US re-entry into the JCPOA, at least from the US side. A renewed JCPOA with anything less will be pilloried in the US Congress and used as a clear bludgeoning tool by Republicans in the fall of 2022.
And what if Mr. Biden’s negotiating team cannot reach acceptable concessions from the Iranians on these issues? One option worth serious thought is to simply pronounce the talks ended or at the very least suspended. The Administration can easily blame Iranian intransigence and would find no argument from most Americans, or from Israelis and Saudis as well.
To his Democratic Party’s progressive wing, the president could logically argue that he tried, having given it six months of tough, good-faith negotiations, and offered significant concessions. And to the entire country, he could easily argue that as eager as he had been to re-enter the JCPOA, he could not forsake US security interests in the Middle East nor betray the interests of valued allies.
There is no counter-argument to that. Moreover, he would silence Republican security and foreign policy hawks while still preserving the high ground not only for having tried to fulfill his campaign promise but also for protecting US interests.
When is the most opportune time to take this step? It may be right now. It will send a clear message to the incoming Iranian administration that while still wanting to re-enter the JCPOA, the US has firm redlines. Such a signal now would certainly be heartbreaking to the millions of Iranians desperate to see US sanctions removed. But more importantly, Mr. Raisi, the Supreme Leader and the rest of Iran’s hardliners may understand there will be no easy exit from its current dilemma. There is only one way to secure an enduring JCPOA.
It is decision time for Iran as well.
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