The deal itself also failed to definitively put a stop to Iranian nuclear weapons programs, instead postponing the day when Iranians could achieve enough uranium enrichment to develop and mount a nuclear warhead on the ballistic missiles they continued to perfect. In this sense, the deal (known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA) delayed a crisis over the issue. It did so at the price of allowing Iran sanctions relief that enriched the regime and allowed it to fund its aspirations and proxies throughout the region.
It therefore comes as no surprise that US President Trump and his administration, which includes prominent hawks on Iran, pulled out of the deal and re-instituted sanctions on Iran. They ostensibly want a new deal that goes further towards permanently hobbling any Iranian capacity to produce nuclear weapons. Much of their rhetoric, however, smells of a policy of forcing Iran to capitulate on a wide array of issues beyond the nuclear one.
Of the 12 American demands that US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo vocalized for the United States to reconsider its sanctions on Iran, only four relate to the nuclear issue (and these four include an end to Iran’s ballistic missile program as well as a permanent end to enrichment and unconditional access of inspectors throughout the country).
Other demands include the freeing of all detainees from the United States and allied countries, ending support to Middle East terrorist groups, including Lebanese Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an end to Iranian meddling in Iraq (“Iran must respect the sovereignty of the Iraqi Government and permit the disarming, demobilization, and reintegration of Shia militias”), ending support for the Houthis in Yemen, withdrawing forces from Syria, ending support for the Taliban “…and other terrorists in Afghanistan and the region,” ending the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Quds Force’s “support for terrorists and militant partners around the world,” and finally, ending Iran’s “threatening behavior against its neighbors” including Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and international shipping in the Gulf.
It’s a long list of demands from the United States, in return for “reconsidering sanctions.” Even if the Iranians have a high tolerance for redundant demands, the list and tone of the demands sounds a bit like World War I-era Austrian ultimatums upon Serbia. These are designed to be rejected.
The Obama administration was able to achieve the JCPOA only by de-linking the nuclear weapons issue from other points of contention between the United States and Iran, at the price of abdicating American financial pressure levers against Iran which could hamper its expansion and agenda.
With the financial pressure now reapplied more painfully than ever before, Tehran is understandably searching for a way out. Few companies in the world will trade with Iran if the US reaction is to blacklist them, and Iranian oil and gas exports have plummeted as fewer and fewer buyers receive sanctions waivers from Washington. European states that wish to maintain the JCPOA seem unable to convince their firms to shoulder the risk of trade with Iran.
As a result, Tehran is as of this week now enriching more uranium than the JCPOA allowed for, and threatening to take enrichment as high as 20 percent in the near future. Such reinvigorated uranium enrichment would put Iran on the cusp of a nuclear weapon in a very short time. With all the oil and gas they can no longer export, Iran clearly does not need nuclear power either. Rather, the regime in Tehran wishes to pressure the world and the United States into ending the sanctions.
This strategy pushes both Iran and the United States into a corner, however. Washington, Tel Aviv, Riyadh and others have all made very clear that they cannot accept nuclear armed mullahs in Tehran. The renewed drive for enrichment, far beyond the non-existent need for energy production in Iran, will increase the perceived need for military action. At the same time, it seems implausible that the Trump administration would back down only to accept Obama’s JCPOA again.
When this kind of pressure reaches sufficiently high levels, we can expect things to begin exploding.
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David Romano has been a Rudaw columnist since 2010. He holds the Thomas G. Strong Professor of Middle East Politics at Missouri State University and is the author of numerous publications on the Kurds and the Middle East. |
