After months of stalling, Iran has finally agreed to resume negotiations with world powers to restore the 2015 nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), on November 29. The Iranians, cautious as they are, are be keen on restarting dialogue that could prospectively provide them with much-needed relief from the crippling sanctions imposed by the United States (US) and the West. Successful negotiations would also allow it to reconnect with the global financial system and prevent further damage to its economy, which has also been battered by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The US, too, will look forward to restoring the 2015 deal with Iran. Washington has argued that bringing Iran back to the nuclear deal would signal trust and a “mutual return to compliance.” It has said that the JCPOA can then be used “as a baseline to negotiate” other areas of tension and thereby “lengthen and strengthen” the deal.
For this to happen, the JCPOA needs to be restored to its original format. However, attempting to put the pieces of the 2015 deal back together is pointless given the new realities of Iran’s nuclear programme, regional tensions, and the ongoing antagonism between Iran and the US.
The sole purpose of the JCPOA was to ensure that “under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop or acquire any nuclear weapons.” Yet, more than six years after the deal was signed, Iran is closer than ever to acquiring a nuclear bomb. In August, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that Iran has been enriching uranium to 60% fissile purity, ever-closer to the weapons-grade level of 90%. The original deal stated that Iran could only enrich uranium up to 3.67% for the next 15 years. Therefore, restoring the old deal would significantly reduce the “breakout time” of 12 months set by the JCPOA for Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon. Moreover, the enrichment deadline of 2030 would be rendered ineffective once the JCPOA is restored seeing as Iran is already well past the stipulated limits.
To make matters worse, Iran has regularly restricted access to IAEA inspectors to its nuclear facilities. In May, Iran halted inspectors’ access to surveillance images taken by IAEA cameras in Iran’s nuclear sites. This was a violation of the Additional Protocol signed as part of the JCPOA, which gave the IAEA access to hundreds of thousands of images of Iranian nuclear facilities. The following month, the nuclear watchdog reported that Iran had failed to explain undeclared uranium traces found at several sites, indicating a further breach of the deal.
Iran’s non-compliance and its violation of the terms set by the JCPOA mean that a new deal with an updated timeline and new enrichment limits will have to be made if the aim is still to prevent it from reaching nuclear threshold capability and acquiring a bomb. Iran, however, has rejected the possibility of setting new terms and has insisted on returning to the original deal.
Tehran has also said that it will only comply with the JCPOA if all sanctions, non-nuclear included, are removed. This makes reviving just the 2015 deal an arduous task, since the US views the removal of all sanctions as a non-starter. Moreover, the 2015 deal did not remove sanctions on Tehran’s “destabilising regional activities,” and human rights abuses, stating that they will only be removed if Iran showed progress in these areas. Furthermore, former US diplomat Richard Haas has argued that lifting all sanctions “would make it easier for Iran to acquire financial resources,” which it could then use to fuel instability in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Gaza.
The growing inextricability between Iran’s nuclear programme and its quest for regional dominance has not been lost on the US. In fact, this was the reason why US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called for a “longer and stronger” agreement that would deal with other “deeply problematic” issues like Iran’s development of ballistic missiles and its use of proxy groups to start conflicts in the wider region. Moreover, one of the biggest criticisms of the 2015 deal was that it did not set limits on Iran’s missile programme. Haas posits that even if Iran returns to the JCPOA, it will not prevent the regime from “accelerating production of ballistic missiles,” an event that could further inflame regional tensions.
Even though the US claims that restoring the original deal will establish trust between all sides, the facts on the ground point to a different reality—one in which there is a huge trust deficit. Regardless of whether the JCPOA was a good or bad deal, the fact that the US, under ex-President Donald Trump, withdrew from the agreement in 2018 and reimposed sanctions on Iran, completely eroded Tehran’s faith in Washington’s credibility as a serious negotiator. This is exactly why Iran has demanded that the US guarantee that it will never withdraw from any future deal before resuming negotiations.
How exactly negotiations will be held in good faith is something to be seen when talks start. But for right now, there seems to be little faith between the negotiating countries, especially the US and Iran. Both countries’ navies have repeatedly clashed in the Persian Gulf region, the US assassinated Iranian Quds Force chief Qassem Soleimani last year, Iran has stepped up cyberattacks on US firms, and it has regularly launched attacks on US allies in the region.
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Matters have been further complicated by Iran’s new hardline government led by President Ebrahim Raisi. Raisi’s regime has further emboldened Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to continue with its regional aggression. Ex-Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif had even claimed that the IRGC was trying to “undermine” nuclear negotiations in Vienna. Iran’s hardliners have also blamed the previous government of Hassan Rouhani for trusting the US after Washington reneged on the deal in 2018. Additionally, the Raisi government abruptly ended nuclear negotiations in June and had been stalling talks for six months while at the same time taking steps to accelerate its nuclear programme and provoke regional tensions.
Simultaneously, the Iran-Israel “shadow war” has drastically escalated over the last few months, with Israel threatening to strike Iranian nuclear facilities. Israel views Iran’s nuclear programme as an “existential threat” and Iran has provoked Israel by repeatedly threatening it with annihilation. However, Israeli covert activities, including cyberattacks on Iranian nuclear facilities and assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists, have only led to a more aggressive Iran that has been able to quickly install new equipment that can enrich uranium at a greater pace. For instance, Iran renovated its Natanz nuclear facility not long after it was sabotaged in an alleged Israeli attack. It has also been argued that Israeli attacks on Iran, sometimes without the blessing of the US, are meant to derail any progress reached during negotiations. Therefore, with the threat of an Israeli ambush lurking in the background, the prospect of restoring the JCPOA does not look promising.
Finally, given Iran’s conflicts with Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, any US deal with Iran would only draw the ire of Washington’s allies in the Gulf. It has also been argued that an Iran with a breakout capacity of days or weeks could prompt one of the Gulf countries to seek a nuclear weapon, which would result in a full-blown nuclear arms race in the Middle East and, according to Haas, “put a conflict-riven region on a hair trigger.” In this respect, restoring the JCPOA to its 2015 format only portends an even bleaker future for the Middle East.
Keeping all of this in mind, it is unclear how the US would go about lengthening or strengthening a deal that Iran looks all but certain to renege on. In this respect, restoring the 2015 Iran nuclear deal would be a pointless affair. While it would provide Tehran with immediate sanctions relief and Washington with a sense of pride in its diplomatic abilities, such a deal would fail to recognise how circumstances and the security environment have evolved over the last six years. The 2015 deal does not address core concerns related to Iran’s nuclear programme and regional rivalries, and it would also fail to establish real faith or goodwill between Iran and other actors. Therefore, considering the fact that Iran’s nuclear programme has become too advanced for its return to the 2015 deal, there is simply no logic in reviving the JCPOA in its old format.