The Iran nuclear deal redux: the President who destroyed it now tries to revive it

For advocates of non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament, the most painful moment of the first Trump administration occurred nearly seven years ago on 8 May 2018 when, in yet another Executive Order at a White House ceremony, Trump withdrew the US from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), better known as the Iran nuclear deal. Trump’s criticism of the Iran nuclear deal was standard for opponents of arms control and international treaties more generally. Because it was not perfect, it was not worth having in the first place. As it represented a compromise, it had to run counter to US security interests as a deal that also brought benefits to Iran had to, by definition, be bad for the US. Trump, then and now, clearly saw international relations, as he sees trade balances, as a zero-sum game in which there can be no winner without the clear defeat and submission of the adversary. Yet, more specifically, he did not trust Tehran to stick to the nuclear deal, even though after it was concluded in 2015 by the Obama administration, there was no evidence that Iran was cheating, either by opening secret processing facilities or by enriching uranium beyond the agreed minimum 3% level. Yet, in Trump’s eyes the fact that Iran was allowed by the deal to retain nuclear research facilities and minimum access to enriched fuel for research and health (cancer treatment) purposes did not reflect the US and Israeli objective of complete denuclearisation. The 15-year duration of the deal also left Iran free to resume enrichment activities to nuclear weapons grade levels at a later date, and in the eyes of Trump this sunset clause gave Iran no reason to shut down its nuclear programme entirely. Its ability to develop its ballistic missile capabilities, necessary for the delivery of nuclear warheads, was likewise unconstrained. As so often on Middle East policy, Trump was greatly influenced by the views of the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, an inveterate foe of Iran and in particular of its nuclear programme. Netanyahu made several visits to Washington during the Obama years to lobby hard against any nuclear deal with Iran, particularly by stirring up Trump and the Republicans against a compromise agreement and blatantly undermining the dogged efforts of US Secretary of State, John Kerry, in the process. The Israeli leader worried that a deal would take his preferred option of the use of military force off the table while giving Tehran major sanctions relief, and thus, the resources to secretly restart its nuclear weapons programme. Maximum pressure on Tehran to bring the country to its knees would, on the other hand, ultimately persuade the Iranian ayatollahs that the price of developing nuclear weapons in terms of sanctions and international isolation greatly exceeded the benefits. As has been the case with nuclear treaties between Russia and the US, the cheating of one side is normally the pretext for the other to abrogate the agreement. This was notably the case with the INF treaty of 1987 or the ABM treaty of 1972. Yet, the 2015 Iran nuclear deal is unique in being abandoned by its principal sponsor when all sides were abiding with it. Trump promised that he would replace a flawed treaty with something much better but never defined what he meant by that, and left office in 2021 with Iran moving closer to a nuclear weapon rather than further away from it. As the French like to say: “la critique est aisée, l’art est difficile”.

In truth, the US withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action did not mark the formal end of the agreement. It had not been negotiated only by the US but also by the other four permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany. The EU also played a key role in mediating the talks. The European powers have tried repeatedly to engage Iran to stay within the broad parameters of the deal, recognising that it would be almost impossible to renegotiate from scratch. Moreover, the International Atomic Agency (IAEA) in Vienna was, for a time, able to carry out onsite inspections in Iran to verify compliance with both enrichment levels and the actual closure of a number of nuclear facilities and research sites as agreed under the deal. But for the Iranians, it was the US participation that mattered. The US was seen as the principal military threat and the restraining hand on Israel. Washington was also the key to sanctions relief and to giving Tehran access to the financial markets given that the bulk of the Iranian frozen assets were in the US rather than Europe, Russia and China. Consequently, after Trump’s move, Iran went back to enriching uranium up to 60% and close to the level required for a nuclear weapon. It reduced cooperation with the IAEA and showed little interest in some early overtures from the Biden administration to restart the negotiations. Given the hostility to Iran from US Republicans and Trump’s unilateral abrogation of the nuclear deal, Tehran had no confidence that any fresh agreement would be approved by Congress or respected by changing administrations in Washington. And as it came closer to becoming a nuclear weapons state, it would have to make ever more concessions and write off a larger volume of investments to secure that new agreement with the US, even if the Iranian leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, continued to proclaim publicly that Iran was not seeking to become a nuclear power.

Now returning to the Oval Office, Trump has declared again that Iran must never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon and has revived his campaign of maximum pressure on Tehran by imposing new financial sanctions. He castigated the Biden administration for returning billions of dollars in frozen assets to Tehran in exchange for the release of four US citizens detained in the country. All this has been music to the ears of Benjamin Netanyahu, who continues to see Iran as the instigator of the multiple threats to Israel’s security in the Middle East and remains convinced that the Iranian leadership is committed to the destruction of Israel, including through the possession and use of nuclear weapons. But the regional context has changed significantly from the first Trump administration. Iran is paradoxically both weaker and stronger than it was seven years ago. Weaker in the sense that Israel has decimated (but far from totally destroyed) its various proxy forces surrounding Israel, from Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the jihadist groups in Syria or the Houthis in Yemen. Even the pro-Iranian Popular Mobilisation Forces in Iraq are now coming under government pressure to disarm or face further US military action. Israel has also struck Iran on two occasions after experiencing Iranian missile and drone attacks against its own territory following its incursions into Gaza and Lebanon and targeted assassinations of Iranian diplomats, military commanders and Hamas leaders visiting Tehran. These Israeli strikes have spared Iran’s nuclear facilities but severely depleted its air defence capability, leaving the country more vulnerable to further Israeli attacks. Yet at the same time, Iran is far less isolated than it was seven years ago. The war in Ukraine has allowed Tehran to draw closer to Russia and to earn valuable currency from supplying Moscow with its Shaheed drones and ballistic missiles and ammunition. Russia has helped Iran to export its oil and China has invested in the development of Iran’s oil and natural gas fields. Iran has been under US and UN sanctions for so many years that it has learned to live under this harsh regime and find workarounds. Despite Trump’s invocation of “maximum pressure”, there is little more that the US can do to tighten the screw against the Islamic Republic. Where the Iranian mullahs have encountered popular protest, it has been due to economic or cultural factors (particularly human rights and the rights of women), and not because of opposition to the nuclear programme that enjoys widespread support. Moreover, Iran’s advancing nuclear programme means that the US cannot ignore the country. Using military force, as Trump likes to hint at from time to time, may seem more urgent as Iran comes closer to having a long-range nuclear strike capability, but it is less likely to succeed as Tehran has learned to diversify its infrastructure and production and testing sites and to acquire such technical capacity and know how that it can resuscitate its programme quickly at any time. Equally, sabotaging Iran’s programme, as the US and Israel have tried to do over several years, can delay Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons, but not stop it entirely. The CIA has a track record in placing faulty components in Iran’s secret supply chains and Israel has used agents to assassinate Iranian scientists by placing sticky bombs on their cars. It has also blown up some Iranian facilities in covert operations. But Iran’s enrichment activities have barely stalled. Israel has demonstrated its regional military superiority during the 18 months since launching its attack on Gaza and precision air strikes have certainly been a major factor in achieving success. But destroying all of Iran’s nuclear programme over multiple sites, many deep underground, is beyond the current capability of the Israeli air force. It would need considerable US help and heavy bunker busting bombs and the air campaign would need to run for several weeks. Trump has declared that he wants to be a “peacemaker” and has condemned “endless wars”. But his repeated strikes against the Houthis in Yemen or his targeting of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards leader, Qasem Soleimani, during his first term shows that the President is not averse to the use of force provided that it is limited, short and relatively risk-free. This would certainly not be the case with a joint US-Israeli war against Iran.

Thus, in the midst of one of the most turbulent weeks in modern times, as Trump’s global tariffs tanked financial markets and upended world trade flows, the White House announced that the US and Iran will meet in Oman this weekend to talk about the future of Iran’s nuclear programme. Despite the usual White House bluster about this being a “historic” meeting or a “sensational new development” promising important future “deals” to ensure global peace, the meeting will be a first step on a very long road. Contrary to what Trump announced initially, the talks will not be direct but indirect, and facilitated by Omani diplomats acting as go-betweens. Netanyahu has already set the bar high calling for a “Libya solution”. This refers to Colonel Gaddafi’s agreement back in 2003 to permanently halt Libya’s fledgling nuclear programme and destroy its stockpiles of chemical weapons in order to improve its relations with the US and UK and have the sanctions lifted that were imposed in the 1980s following the country’s involvement in international terrorism. Netanyahu has made clear that he will accept only the full dismantling of Iran’s nuclear facilities under US supervision. He has advised the US not to allow Tehran to drag out the talks, but to set a firm deadline after which military action could follow. Having been at the White House this past week, he has no doubt rammed this message home with the US President. On the other hand, the Iranian Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, has played down expectations of rapid progress and warned that Iran will not negotiate under the threat of coercion. Winston Churchill was undoubtedly correct in saying that “jaw-jaw is better than war-war” but it is not easy to see how Trump’s White House, with its unconditional military support for Israel, can bridge the ocean of distrust and bad history that separates it from Iran. As in his so-far failed efforts to secure a ceasefire in Ukraine, Trump is much happier announcing meetings and promising great deals than in presenting coherent strategies, or dealing with substance and detail. He likes the media and performative role of government rather than the tough act of government itself and confuses announcements and ambitions with actual progress. The nomination of his Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, to be his negotiator in Oman doesn’t sound promising. Witkoff doesn’t know Iran and has no experience of military strategy and complex arms control negotiations. Like the Russians, the Iranians are extremely tough negotiators who have worked on security issues for decades and know the politics, weaknesses and vulnerabilities of their opponents better than anyone. Indeed, given the reputation of the Iranians for intransigence, it seemed like a minor miracle back in 2015 when they agreed to cap their nuclear activities in the JCPOA. Witkoff, like Trump himself, has shown that he is more able to put pressure on America’s allies than its adversaries. The Iranians have also noted Trump’s willingness to make major concessions upfront and with little or no return in order to inject momentum into the negotiating process. They have seen from the Russians that the trick is to appear to be willing to engage in order to play for time and keep the US in the talks while giving nothing of substance away. Tehran’s tactic will certainly be to try to divide Israel and the US by offering Trump enough to claim “victory” while keeping enough military capability to claim leadership of the “front of resistance” to Israel’s increasing dominance in the Middle East. Tehran knows that Trump is currently fishing around for a quick diplomatic win to secure the Nobel Peace Prize. He has already tried the Middle East and Gaza as well as Ukraine with limited results and may well move back to North Korea, the unfinished business of Trump’s first term, soon. So, the Iranians will wait to see how much Trump is really committed to a balanced and substantive result on the Iranian nuclear deal and willing and able to do the heavy diplomatic lifting required. The easiest solution would be to revive the JCPOA as the agreement that all sides previously accepted. But Trump was so vocal in his condemnation of the JCPOA that it would be humiliating for him now to embrace it without some significant, if largely cosmetic, changes. Iran, for its part, will be looking second time round for earlier and larger economic concessions from the US to make up for its loss of confidence in Washington, and guarantees that there will be no military strikes against it by the US or Israel. Only then will it presumably agree to new limits on its processing activities and full scope IAEA safeguards and inspections. A compromise along these lines might be conceivable if under a new nuclear agreement Iran would solemnly accept to remain a non-nuclear weapons state under the provisions of the UN Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty of 1970. The US could also seek limits on Iran’s missile programme in terms of numbers, range and payloads. But a compromise there will have to be. Could Trump really deliver this and under which conditions?

First, the President will need to hold his nose and take a second look at the JCPOA free of the poisoned politics that doomed it during Trump’s first administration. Then, the opposition of Republicans seemed to stem as much from the fact that it had been concluded by a Democratic administration than because of technical objections to the agreement’s contents. The agreement contained many useful advantages from the US viewpoint including low processing levels, automatic snapback sanctions that can be applied unilaterally in the case of cheating, intrusive inspections and actions to make fully transparent Iran’s past nuclear activities that would expose Iran’s clandestine supply chains. It was also due to last for 15 years, which would give the international community time to reduce regional tensions and identify longer term solutions for Iran’s denuclearisation or internal democratisation. Plenty of things can happen in 15 years and gaining time is not only to the advantage of the autocracies. On this basis, Trump and his advisors need to do some detailed work on which improvements to the old JCPOA from their perspective they could realistically gain from Iran and which incentives they could put on the table. It will be impossible for Iran, which has proved its capacity to keep its nuclear weapons programme going despite swingeing sanctions, to abandon that programme entirely unless Israel also abandons its nuclear weapons- something inconceivable from an Israeli perspective. But Trump could gain some confidence from Iranian negotiators if he at least commits not to give Tel Aviv the heavy bombs that it would need to destroy Iran’s underground nuclear bunkers. What could help Trump to sell a second Iranian nuclear deal to both Israel and his own fellow Republican hawks would be to persuade Tehran to accept restraints on its regional behaviour, such as sending arms to Hamas, Hezbollah or the Houthis. Given Iran’s current weakened position, it might be ready to accept a pause in its support for the pro-Iranian proxy forces. But at all events, arms control is a highly technical and complicated business. You need a strategy and a plan, and a clear sense of your red lines and your fall back positions. You also need patience and perseverance. Is the US administration capable of coming up with such a strategy or staying the course without the constant flip flops that have characterised most of its decisions thus far?

The second condition of success is for Trump to be willing and able to face down the Republican die-hards in Congress and Netanyahu and the right-wing Israelis. A détente with Iran is not in their political interest. Their careers have been built on portraying Iran as the existential threat. Peace is made not with your friends, but with your enemies, which means that inevitably a Trump deal will be just as imperfect as all the arms control agreements he criticised in the past. Of course, as Netanyahu is much closer to Trump and the Republicans than he was to Obama and the Democrats, it will more difficult for him to sabotage a second Iran nuclear deal, which many Democrats will also support. His greatest hope is that Trump will overreach and fail, even if he will need to pay lip service to the notion of a deal in public to maintain US support. All great leaders need to row against public opinion and even their own supporters from time to time to achieve historic breakthroughs and peace agreements. They often pay a heavy political price, and some like Egyptian president Anwar Sadat or Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin were even branded as traitors and assassinated. Trump is unlikely to suffer such a grim fate and may even earn his Nobel Peace Prize. But as a populist who likes to present foreign relations in black and white terms and to present victories as easy and painless for the US, a difficult compromise with Iran will be a hard sell. The US has demonised Iran as Iran has demonised the US, and so Trump will need to build a bipartisan base of support across party divides and convince US public opinion that a deal serves the security of the US as well as Israel. As he becomes a lame duck president late in his term, this job could be harder, but also easier as Trump will have nothing to lose and only his place in history to think about. But again is ‘Trump the populist’ up to the challenge of becoming ‘Trump the statesman’?

Finally, Trump will need to engage with Europe and the UN instead of trying to go it alone. The three European powers, France, Germany and the UK, have continued their conversations with Tehran on the nuclear file and therefore have the best sense of internal dynamics within the Iranian security establishment and the balance of power between hawks and doves. They will be able to offer insights and advice, and have a view on where Iran can be pressured or offer concessions. The US has not had an embassy in Iran for decades and intelligence agencies are no substitute for direct talks and a prolonged diplomatic presence on the ground. Europe and the EU will also need to be involved in offering Iran incentives and a phased lifting of sanctions. A multilateral framework can also be helpful to the US by making it less a confrontational game of winners and losers between Tehran and Washington in which saving face will paramount. As in the past, the Europeans can also serve as bridge builders and go-betweens in the negotiations. The same applies to the IAEA. Trump and Israel have a fundamental distrust of the UN, and the Israeli actions against UNRWA in Gaza or UNIFIL in Lebanon have only exacerbated the mistrust and mutual criticism. But the IAEA has a good track record of holding Iran to account for its past nuclear transgressions and for closely monitoring its current programmes. A continued IAEA role will undoubtedly be more acceptable to Tehran than a permanent US civilian or military monitoring presence in Iran post-agreement. As with full denuclearisation, this would only be possible in the wake of an Iranian military defeat and a prolonged US military occupation of the country as happened to neighbouring Iraq after George W. Bush’s invasion in 2003. Yet, that bitter experience is hardly likely to encourage Trump to contemplate the same thing in Iran, an even more challenging country with much stronger armed forces. The Iranians are used to working with the IAEA. So better the devil you know than the devil you don’t. But again, can an administration that has denigrated Europe and the UN change course and begin to work constructively with them? It seems a big ask but if Trump is serious about reaching an agreement with Iran, he will need to bite the bullet and do some skilful diplomacy. This time, the Russians and Chinese will not be as helpful to Washington as they were last time, even if Moscow has said that it supports US-Iranian talks on nuclear issues. So, the US will need to work with the allies it has rather than rely on those of its Iranian opponent.

Ultimately, what’s in it for Trump? He has joined his Republican predecessor, Ronald Reagan, in being an advocate of global nuclear disarmament. Like Reagan, who launched his famous Strategic Defense Initiative or ‘Star Wars’ in 1982 to make nuclear weapons obsolete through building effective defences, Trump wants to protect America through a new ‘Golden Dome’ shield modelled on the Israeli Iron Dome. He has spoken of new arms control agreements with Russia and China to radically reduce the number of nuclear weapons. He has spoken of his interest in renewing talks with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, to halt that country’s accelerating nuclear build up. As the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has just reset its Doomsday Clock to 90 seconds to midnight, the nuclear dangers confronting the world are now much more acute than during Trump’s first term. Russian officials have openly gesticulated with the use of tactical nuclear weapons in the Ukraine conflict. Russia and China are both moving ahead rapidly with the modernisation of their nuclear arsenals and developing new hyper velocity ballistic missiles and nuclear capable drones. North Korea has launched satellites and is developing missiles that can be fired from submarines. And as discussed previously, Iran, freed from the constraints of the 2015 nuclear deal, has ratcheted up its nuclear fuel processing cycle. This year, the New START agreement, the last remaining arms control agreement between the US and Russia, is due to expire, with no plan for follow on negotiations yet to extend it or replace it. Meanwhile, Russia has recently revised its nuclear doctrine to lower the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons and increase the number of scenarios in which nuclear use could be possible. If Trump were able to surprise us and pull a revamped nuclear deal with Iran out of the hat, he would not only contribute to stability and security in the Middle East but also take an urgently needed step to push the nuclear genie back into the bottle. An Iran deal could open up prospects for a new international push to strengthen the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and new negotiations between the major nuclear powers, pushing the hands of the Doomsday Clock back beyond two minutes to midnight. If Trump is serious about being a peacemaker, like the Nixon or Reagan presidencies that he claims to admire, revitalising international efforts behind arms control and disarmament would be a foreign policy objective worth striking for. And to make Trump worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize. The vision is there, but is he capable of the hard grind and pragmatism needed to achieve it?

The views expressed in this #CriticalThinking article reflect those of the author(s) and not of Friends of Europe.