Iran and the United States appear to be in the final stages of negotiations to revive a 2015 agreement, known officially as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which imposed strict limits on Iran’s nuclear enrichment capabilities in exchange for lessening the country’s diplomatic and economic isolation. Some reportsIt is possible to announce a deal in as little as two weeks.
There are still some key sticking points that could impede the negotiations. Iran’s government wants assurances that any agreement won’t be ripped up by a future U.S. president, as Donald Trump did with the first deal. Those assurances aren’t likely to be forthcoming, however, as the Senate is all but guaranteed not to ratify any deal as an official treaty. It would be an executive agreementLike the first deal, it can be undone through future executive actions. Even if the first deal had been ratified as a treaty, it’s possibleTrump could have walked away from the agreement without congressional approval. Iran has also been reportedly asked that its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps be removed from a U.S. terrorist watchlist; it’s not clear whether the Biden administration is considering taking that measure.
Both Iran and the United States have long opposed any deal the other country could reach. Former Iranian President Hassan Rouhani (a moderate) was the one who negotiated and signed the agreement. He has been politically marginalized by those opposed to the deal and some even asked him to be fired. prosecutedFor treason.
Similarly, elected Republicans in the United States are openly opposed to diplomacy. More than 150 Republican members have signed a document. letter promising to oppose any deal between the Biden administration and Iran that wasn’t simultaneously ratified as a treaty and approved by two-thirds of the Senate. The Republicans’ letter to Biden states that if he “forge[s] an agreement with the Supreme Leader of Iran without formal Congressional approval, it will be temporary and non-binding and meet the same fate” as the deal negotiated under President Obama.
33 Republican senators sent their own earlier this month letterSimilar warning. “Any agreement related to Iran’s nuclear program which is not a treaty ratified by the Senate is subject to being reversed, and indeed will likely be torn up, in the opening days of the next Presidential administration, as early as January 2025,” the senators wrote.
The original 2015 agreement gave Congress a 60-day review period in which to examine the agreement. Republicans in both houses were eventually expelled. unsuccessful in derailing it legislatively.
Practically, the threat’s impact is minimal for the time being. “The reality is that the JCPOA has already been reviewed and voted on in Congress,” Ali Vaez, Iran project director at Crisis Group, recently told Axios. “All the political posturing notwithstanding, there is practically nothing that Congress can do to stop that from happening.”
Still, the two letters send an unmistakable message to Iran’s leaders that should a Republican win the presidential election in 2024, any diplomatic agreements made by the Biden administration won’t be honored.
In interviewIn the Financial Times, Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian called on Congress to “issue a political statement announcing their support of the agreement and a return to J.C.P.O.A.” He added, “Iran cannot accept as a guarantee the words of a head of state, let alone the United States, due to the withdrawal of Americans from the JCPOA.”
Joe Cirincione, a distinguished fellow of the Quincy Institute, tweeted that “the biggest remaining obstacle” to a deal was “the lack of US credibility” due to Trump’s unilateral withdrawal from the first deal.
Trump withdrew in May 2018 from the agreement, despite his own administration twice requesting it. certifyingIran had already signed the agreement. The U.S. imposed severe sanctions on Iran, driving up energy costs and causing significant pain to Iranian citizens. These sanctions were also severe. limited Iranians’ access to medicine and other health care, despite theoretical exemptions for humanitarian aid. “For ordinary people, sanctions mean unemployment, sanctions mean becoming poor, sanctions mean the scarcity of medicine, the rising price of dollar,” Akbar Shamsodini, an Iranian businessman told The GuardianIn 2018. The other signatories to the deal — France, Germany, the U.K., China and Russia — were all forced to determine whether or not they would continue to abide by the agreed-upon terms of the deal.
Iran has maintained that its nuclear program is not for energy production but is peaceful. Those claims are supported by the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency, which hasn’t found evidenceIran is developing a nuclear weapon. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei recently reiteratedHis country is only developing their nuclear program for peaceful purposes and to ensure their energy independence.
The Republican Party is almost unanimous in its opposition to the deal. Signatories to the recent letter to Biden included House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, hardcore Trumpists like Louie Gohmert and Jim Jordan, and “never-Trump” conservative Liz Cheney. Since 2002, when then-President George W. Bush added Iran to the so-called Axis of Evil, it has been a fact. State of the Union address, conservatives have found wide-ranging political utility in manufacturing Iran as the world’s great supervillain.
As much ink is being spilled about the supposed fractures within the Republican Party, the unanimously-hawkish approach towards Iran is instructive. Although Trump engaged in more explicitly anti-Muslim, bigoted rhetoric than his fellow primary candidates in 2016, every Republican presidential hopeful promised to rip up the deal, regardless of Iran’s compliance.
In many ways, the anti Iran positions help to clarify the differences between the so called nationalist wing and the more traditional neoconservative side. Members of the nationalist wing — as epitomized by Trump, his adviser Steve Bannon, and Congresspeople Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert — are more likely to engageIn open Islamophobia, they stake out their anti-Iran positions. Much of the conservative, anti Iran rhetoric since the Bush-era has relied on racist, Orientalist tropes that Iranians are untrustworthy, sneaky, duplicitous or otherwise suicidal and irrational. Too much reportingThe United States has also uncritically supported the idea that Iran is determined to acquire nuclear weapons, and is on the brink of doing so, regardless if there are any changes in the country.
A second aspect of the House GOP letter is worth mentioning: It highlighted Russia’s role in the letter. reportedlyInvolving in the negotiations which were largely indirect between Iran, the United States. Republicans promised to “investigate any connections” between the Iran talks and the concurrent diplomatic efforts to prevent Russia from invading Ukraine. The letter states: “If your dependency on the Russians to revive the JCPOA is weakening our deterrent posture with the Russians in other areas of the world, the American people deserve to know.”
As Carl Beijer wrote in reaction, Republicans are “suggest[ing] that if Biden manages to make a deal with Iran, it will be because he pulled his punches in Ukraine and thereby gained Russia’s assistance.” Beijer calls this effort “an absolutely monstrous gambit” and argues that, “[t]he GOP is hoping to peel support off Biden’s supporters among people who are anxious about Russia by promoting a narrative where any deal he cuts with Iran implies a backchannel deal with Putin as well. And where any de-escalation in Ukraine implies the same thing.”
Democrats in Congress and the Biden Administration should vigorously resist this kind of new Cold War reasoning. They should also continue to pursue diplomacy towards Iran and make every effort to de-escalate tensions between Russia, Ukraine. Agitating for open conflict only serves the hardliners and war profiteers in the United States and abroad — and endangers countless lives.
