IDI Member Bijan Khajehpour: Thoughts on U.S. Withdrawal from the Iran Nuclear Deal

A few thoughts on Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal

Bijan Khajehpour, IDI member

 

The 8 May announcement by US President Donald Trump that “the United States will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal” has caused confusion on many levels and thrown EU-US relations into unchartered waters.  Below I will look at some of the many aspects of this decision which could end up being Trump’s most consequential mistake in foreign policy:

• First and foremost, Trump has not “withdrawn” from the nuclear deal (also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA) as it is a multilateral deal, but he has violated a deal that was negotiated in good faith and also confirmed as a UN Security Council Resolution.  This violation sets a precedence for other parties to multilateral deals that can put many such agreements in disarray.
• Second, Trump’s speech was full of factual errors.  He lied about the content of the JCPOA, about Iran’s nuclear activities and military budget and about the actual objectives of the JCPOA.  He even felt at ease to claim that Iran had sponsored the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, two of the most anti-Shiite and anti-Iranian Sunni extremist groups whose initial acts of terror were aimed at Iranian targets.  The fact is that the deal was designed to prolong the so-called break-out time of the Iranian nuclear option – an objective that has been achieved successfully. In fact, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has confirmed every quarter since the signing of the deal in July 2015 that Iran has complied with its commitments.  A potential collapse of the deal will compel Iran to return to a very short break-out time, which would change the security calculations of Israel and other regional powers and potentially lead to a nuclear arms race in the region. No logic can explain why a US president would opt for such a scenario.
• Third, the decision was an affront to the US’ closest allies, i.e. the European signatories of the deal – UK, France and Germany – who had gone out of their way to convince Trump that it was a misguided decision.  The most telling reaction from Europe came from Frederica Mogherini who said on 11 May: “It seems that screaming, shouting, insulting and bullying, systematically destroying and dismantling everything that is already in place, is the mood of our times. While the secret of change — and we need change — is to put all energies not into destroying the old, but rather into building the new… This impulse to destroy is not leading us anywhere good. It is not solving any of our problems.”  In fact, European intellectuals and politicians alike are compelling the EU to look for ways to institutionalize a more independent security and international policy, which could lead to further distancing between the two major powers.
• Fourth, despite his claim to care about the Iranian people, Trump must realize that his attempt to kill the JCPOA will eventually lead to the empowerment of the Iranian hardliners whose dominance in Iranian politics will lead to domestic clamp-down and also increased regional tensions.  Furthermore, as past sanctions have shown, the main cost of sanctions are borne by the Iranian people and not by the Iranian regime constituents.
• Fifth, for a President who claimed to put America first, it is clear that US business interests as well as European business interests will be undermined as a result of new US sanctions on Iran.  Case in point is the fact that Boeing had to cancel multi-billion dollar contracts with Iranian airlines – contracts that will most probably go to Russian manufacturers such as Sokhoi as the US decision will also bar European manufacturers from selling planes to Iran.  If anyone is looking for proof of collusion with Russia, this is also an interesting case as Russian businesses will be the main winners from the decision alongside Chinese companies that have had an intense trade relationship with Iran.

The above list does not exhaust the many wrongs in the Trump decision and it is difficult to understand the rationale, unless one views the decision within the following frameworks:

1. Trump would like to undo all the key achievements of the Obama era and it is clear that the JCPOA was a major such achievement.
2. Trump would like to change the balance of power in the Middle East to the advantage of Israel and Saudi Arabia for which he and his administration need to push back against Iran’s relative gains in regional power.
3. Trump and his closest confidantes wish to pave the way for another disastrous war in the Middle East.  They are looking for an Iranian mistake to justify military intervention, which would be an enormous disaster.

It is no secret that the above geopolitical goals are just illusions and that any escalation of relations in the Middle East will lead to new tensions and crises that will further complicate the resolution of existing crises such as Syria, Iraq and Yemen, to name a few.  One could immediately detect the ill-advised reactions in the region when Israel decided to attack so-called Iranian targets in Syria – an act that could easily lead to new escalatory actions on all sides.

The good news is that the Iranians are not as trigger-happy as Trump and some of his regional allies.  So far, Tehran’s response has relied on diplomacy and on attempting to save the JCPOA through additional agreements with the other five signatories of the deal.  Iran’s foreign minister has already visited Beijing and Moscow and will be in Brussels on 15 May to talk to the European partners.

If the JCPOA signatories minus Washington manage to sustain the deal and push back against US sanctions, it will be a major blow to Trump’s plans.  What Trump, Bolton and Pompeo got wrong is the fact that when President Obama managed to secure wide international cooperation in anti-Iran sanctions, Iran’s face was a Holocaust-denying hardliner called Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  However, today Iran has a moderate face and also a regime that has abided by its commitments within the nuclear deal, despite all its other shortcomings. Consequently, Washington will be relatively isolated in an international process that will certainly undermine US soft power internationally.  Of course, Trump may decide to flex the US military and financial muscles and try to blackmail many to cooperating with Washington, but that process won’t solve any of the current issues in the Middle East.

What the Middle East powers need is a respectful, multilateral dialogue that takes into account the security concerns of all parties and not a trigger-happy US meddling in the regional affairs.  Let us hope that reason will prevail among the other signatories of the JCPOA and that it can be saved as a potential model for solving other international issues.

Unless otherwise noted, IDI Blog Posts represent the opinions and/or work of individual IDI members working independently and do not necessarily represent the opinions and/or work of the IDI as a whole.