The Iran Nuclear Deal

By Sultan Habsi ‘22

On May 8th, 2018, President Trump announced that the United States was withdrawing from the  Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or the Iran nuclear deal, that had been signed on the 14th of July, 2015, between Iran and the P5+1—made up of the US, UK, China, Germany, France, and Russia. This announcement  did not come as a surprise, since Trump had promised in his campaign to leave what he had called “the stupidest deal of all time” –  a deal that was aimed at shifting Iran’s nuclear program from producing weapons to peaceful commercial energy goods.

Trump pointed out that the JCPOA had made significant concessions to Iran by lifting U.N. Security Council sanctions on energy, trade, technology, and financial sectors. Therefore, as soon as a couple months after leaving the deal, the Trump administration ordered the reimposition of economic sanctions on the oil, banking, and shipping sectors. This was met by a sharp outcry from both Iran and the international community, along with assertions that Iran had followed the terms of the deal, including vigilant inspection of their nuclear program by a U.N. watchdog. In an effort to salvage the treaty, other signatories of the treaty set up a mechanism with which to continue trading with Iran without facing U.S. penalties.

However, U.S. sanctions have had a crippling effect on the Iranian economy, including high inflation and a sinking of the Iranian rial. More recently, it played a part in the shortage of medical supplies the country could import during the COVID-19 pandemic. With Iran framing the United States’ reimposition of sanctions as criminal, in May 2019, Iran suspended its own commitments under the JCPOA, threatening to resume the production of highly enriched uranium, unless it was protected from U.S. sanctions.

With a new U.S. administration on the horizon, the Iranian president Rouhani framed that President-elect Biden has an opportunity to “compensate for past mistakes.” Biden has publicly made it clear that he is interested in rejoining the Iran Nuclear Deal, and would lift sanctions on Iran if it returns to “strict compliance with the nuclear deal”. However, both leaders do not have much time to negotiate, as Iran heads into elections in the middle of next year, with an even more conservative-leaning populace. Biden might also not have the support he needs back home, as Senate control is still unclear. 

The current Trump administration, vocally disagrees with any return to the deal, with the Secretary of State claiming “Sanctions are part of […] creating a new Middle East,” accompanied by a new package of sanctions on prominent Iranian figures and a charity accused of committing human rights violations. This administration also touted that its sanctions had been “extraordinarily effective” and should not not be reversed, costing Iran hundreds of billions of dollars since 2018

However, this “success” that the Trump administration claims is juxtaposed with a stronger and more ramped-up Iranian nuclear program. Part of the JCPOA was ensuring that Iran’s “break-out time”, or the time it needs to produce an atomic bomb, was stalled from only 3 months to at least a year. As of current IAEA reports, the U.N. watchdog, Iran has breached the deal after the United States’ withdrawal, using advanced uranium-enrichment centrifuges that can have significantly reduced Iran’s break-out time, and thus propels them closer to holding nuclear weapons. In that sense, Trump’s “success” of costing Iran billions in revenue is backfiring.

In fact, the Trump administration, even if they are trying to assert dominance by adding more sanctions, seem to display their concerns about this unfortunate advancement. In fact, before the new sanction packages, Trump himself had asked his advisers if there were any military actions he could take against Iran’s main nuclear site that had transgressed the deal’s limits and started enriching high-grade uranium. The speculation of any military strikes was not only ruled off the table by advisers, but was also starkly warned against by the IAEA chief stating “[an] attack would be detrimental to any inspection activity, let alone the safety of my inspectors“. 

However, on November 27th, 2020, Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was assassinated in a drive-by attack. Who carried out this killing is still unclear and not accounted for, but Fakhrizadeh has long been on both the C.I.A.’s and Mossad’s radars, as Iran had tried to shroud his involvement in its nuclear weapons program. This development is sure to antagonize Iran from returning back to the nuclear deal, which is an apparent victory for a Trump legacy and other regional powers, like Israel, that had long opposed the deal. However, it seems that Iran is still looking at the European Union to condemn this assassination, indicating Iran still values Western ties.While many had argued that Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran deal might have been a misstep, it could have offered the U.S and Biden precious leverage in not only returning to previously agreed limits and restrictions, but possibly an even stricter deal that the Iranians might willingly accept to lift these crippling economic sanctions. However, this is no longer a done deal, and further complicated by the assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist. Similarly, the United States has set an extremely dangerous precedent by withdrawing from not only the Iran nuclear deal, but many other international agreements and organizations. The Biden administration would have a lot to rectify on the international front, and especially given the very real possibility of Iran electing a president that is more conservative and wary of Western intervention, even a deal struck up between Biden and Rouhani early in 2021 could possibly be later renegotiated, if not withdrawn from, by the Iranians—in the spirit of Trump.