Saturday, 5 December 2020

Iran's Parliament Is Helping Joe Biden To Rejoin The Nuclear Deal

 

moon of alabama 


President elect Joe Biden plans to renew the U.S. participation in the nuclear agreement with Iran. Trump had left the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) which Iran and six other nations had signed. 

Biden is under pressure to attach preconditions for a U.S. return to the deal which Iran would not accept:

Biden and his team have been paying lip service to the notion of rejoining the JCPOA. However, the preconditions they have attached to such an action – Iran would have to return to full compliance first, and commit to immediate follow-on negotiations on a deal that would be more restrictive – were widely seen as a deal-breaker. The fact is, many of Biden’s closest advisers – including Secretary of State-designee Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor-designee Jake Sullivan – have indicated that Biden may have no choice but to continue the Trump policy of sanctions-based ‘maximum pressure’.

So far Biden himself had been somewhat ambivalent about the issue. But in a recent interview with New York Times columnist Tom Friedman he seems to reject the use of preconditions for a JCPOA return to get to a bigger deal:

The view of Biden and his national security team is that once the deal is restored by both sides, there will have to be, in very short order, a round of negotiations to seek to lengthen the duration of the restrictions on Iran’s production of fissile material that could be used to make a bomb — originally 15 years — as well as to address Iran’s malign regional activities, through its proxies in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

Ideally, the Biden team would like to see that follow-on negotiation include not only the original signatories to the deal — Iran, the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France, Germany and the European Union — but also Iran’s Arab neighbors, particularly Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Earlier this week, I wrote a column arguing that it would be unwise for the United States to give up the leverage of the Trump-imposed oil sanctions just to resume the nuclear deal where it left off. We should use that leverage to also get Iran to curb its exports of precision-guided missiles to its allies in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iraq, where they threaten Israel and several Arab states. I still believe that.

Biden’s team is aware of that argument, and does not think it is crazy — but for now they insist that America’s overwhelming national interest is to get Iran’s nuclear program back under control and fully inspected.
...

In their view, Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon poses a direct national security threat to the United States and to the global nuclear weapons control regime, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

“Look, there’s a lot of talk about precision missiles and all range of other things that are destabilizing the region,” Biden said. But the fact is, “the best way to achieve getting some stability in the region” is to deal “with the nuclear program.”
...
Then, Biden said, “in consultation with our allies and partners, we’re going to engage in negotiations and follow-on agreements to tighten and lengthen Iran’s nuclear constraints, as well as address the missile program.” The U.S. always has the option to snap back sanctions if need be, and Iran knows that, he added.

That is still a bit murky. Lift the sanctions that were put onto Iran by Trump to get back to the JCPOA but then introduce new sanctions on Iran for its non-nuclear missile program? That is NOT going to work.

Biden will have little time to make up his mind and to return to the deal. In response to the Israeli murder of Iran's top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fahrizade the Iranian parliament has taken steps to leave the limits of the nuclear deal unless the U.S. returns to it as soon as Biden is in office:

Iran’s top political chamber gave final approval to a bill forcing President Hassan Rouhani to end international nuclear inspections unless the U.S. lifts key sanctions by February, giving the incoming Biden administration just weeks to make a diplomatic breakthrough.

The powerful Guardian Council, a political and legal body made up of senior clerics and scholars, ratified the bill on Tuesday and made it a legal requirement, while extending the deadline for sanctions relief to two months, instead of one, Iranian state TV reported.

That would appear to give Rouhani’s government -- severely weakened since outgoing U.S. President Donald Trump walked away from the 2015 nuclear deal -- barely two weeks after successor Joe Biden enters office to make major strides toward brokering the removal of U.S. oil and banking sanctions.

The details of the new law are yet unknown. One part orders the government to lessen the IAEA oversight of nuclear sites in Iran. Another instruction is to create a stockpile of higher enriched Uranium that potentially could be used to further enrich to weapons grade levels:

The plan, among other things, requires the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) to produce at least 120 kg of 20-percent enriched uranium annually and store it inside the country within two months after the adoption of the law.

The new Iranian law is supporting Biden's argument that a fast return to the nuclear deal is the more assuring path than to bet on time and additional sanctions to gain additional concessions which Iran is anyway unlikely to give.

He should immediately lift the sanctions against Iran and fully reinstate the U.S. as a JCPOA member. Iran has said that it would return to all limits of the deal as soon as that has happened.

The big pipe dream of follow-on negotiation which also include Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates can than be pushed out to a (much) later date.


Posted by b on December 2, 2020 at 17:20 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/12/irans-parliament-is-helping-joe-biden-to-rejoin-the-nuclear-deal.html#more

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