Critics And Supporters Of JCPOA Say Biden's Iran Policy Has Failed
Antony Blinken, while lauding the 2015 Iran nuclear deal Monday, warned that Iranian actions to limit UN monitoring efforts might close the door to its revival.
Antony Blinken, while lauding the 2015 Iran nuclear deal Monday, warned that Iranian actions to limit UN monitoring efforts might close the door to its revival.
Separately, he also said the US will “cooperate” with Israel to stop Iran weaponizing.
In a joint press conference Monday with South Korean foreign Minister Park Jin the United States Secretary of State praised the 2015 deal – the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) – as “the most comprehensive and complete monitoring and inspections regime of any arms control agreement yet put in place.”
At the same time, Blinken voiced concern over Iran’s negotiating tactics in the stalled Vienna talks. “But what we’ve seen is Iran continuing to try to inject extraneous issues into the conversation, into the negotiation, that simply have no place there.”
Referring to year-long talks between Iran and world powers to revive the 2015 agreement, Blinken said that “a lot of work went into seeing if we could return to mutual compliance with the JCPOA” but “it is fundamentally up to Iran to decide whether or not it wishes to re-engage.”
The Biden administration came into office committed to restoring the JCPOA, from which President Donald Trump withdrew the US in 2018 calling the deal “the worst in history.” Trump’s ‘maximum pressure’ pressure sanctions on Iran were followed in 2019 with Tehran expanding its nuclear program beyond JCPOA limits, a move that accelerated after the election of Joe Biden.
Cooperation with Israel
In a video address to the American Jewish Congress Forum delivered Monday, Blinken said “we are continuing our close coordination with our Israeli partners to prevent Iran from developing” a nuclear weapon.
This came with claims in the New York Times that Israel, which opposes the JCPOA, had poisoned two Iranian scientists, Ayoub Entezari and Kamran Aghamolaei, who were in May reported dead from food poisoning.
The November 2021 killing of scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, which outraged the Iranian parliament and led it to pass legislation expanding Iran’s nuclear program, was widely attributed to Israel, as were four killings and one attempted murder 2010-12.
“We have shifted into a higher gear,” Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said last week at a meeting of parliament’s defense and foreign affairs committee. “We are acting at all times and places, and we will continue to do so.”
Israel has also been carrying out widespread military drills reported by the Israeli media as simulating attacks on Iran.
Biden criticized from both sides
The Biden administration’s approach has led to nervousness in the European Union, which has led efforts to keep open a diplomatic path with Tehran and it concerned over what is perceived as lethargy in the face of Israeli saber-rattling.
In the US, criticism of the US administration’s approach has been growing as the Iranian nuclear program continues to expand under reduced monitoring by the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
At the beginning of June, Robert Menendez, chair of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, said “hope is not a national security strategy” and more recently that restoring the JCPOA was not in US interests. Menendez called for a “comprehensive strategy” over Iran.
Supporters of the JCPOA agree Biden’s approach has failed. The president had “ruled out the symbolic concession that would be most likely to break the months-long diplomatic impasse [taking Iran’s Revolutionary Guards off the US list of ‘foreign terrorist organizations,’ reportedly an issue in talks],” Ryan Costello, policy director of the National Iranian American Council, wrote in a piece published June 9.
But opponents of making concessions to Iran say removing the IRGC from the US terror list is not a symbolic act at all, as the military-intelligence outfit actively pursues a policy to harm Americans and allies.
“It’s feasible, it’s doable,” Mikhail Ulyanov said. The ambassador claimed agreement between Iran and world powers was “99.9 percent” achieved when talks broke off March 10.
"We were five minutes from the finishing line,” he told Iran International Fardad Farahzad in a video interview.
After year-long negotiations to revive the 2015 deal, known as JCPOA, stopped in Vienna, it became clear that Iran and the United States had significant differences over what sanctions would be removed once an agreement was inked. Iran insisted that its Revolutionary Guard should be removed from the US list of terrorist organizations, a demand Washington has refused.
Ulyanov condemned the resolution passed Wednesday by the IAEA board criticizing Iran, which he said was "counterproductive" and "illogical at a very delicate moment in the Vienna talks when the final outcome is in question.” On Thursday, Ulyanov had called the Western move “stupid”, but in the he told Iran International that he should not have deviated from diplomatic language.
The resolution tabled by the United States, United Kingdom, France and Germany passed overwhelmingly, leaving only China and Russia as countries voting against.
Resolutions were passed by the 35-member board, Ulyanov argued only “on rare occasions and is perceived as something extraordinary as a rule.”
The ambassador denied the situation with Iran – including its growing stockpile of uranium enriched to 60 percent and its continuing restrictions of IAEA monitoring - was extraordinary.
“It’s not urgent,” he said. “We are talking about uranium particles which belong to the beginning of this millennium [work carried out by Iran before 2003]…nobody can insist that these particles represent any proliferation risk.” Tehran had provided some information to the IAEA, he added, including over uranium metal, so that “progress is there.”
But the IAEA thought otherwise when on June 6 its director Rafael Grossi submitted his report to the Board of Directors saying, “Iran has not provided explanations that are technically credible in relation to the Agency’s findings at three undeclared locations in Iran.”
Iran and the IAEA had agreed in March that Tehran would fully answer questions about its past nuclear work by mid-June, and the UN nuclear watchdog concluded that there was little progress in that respect.
Ulyanov insisted that the passage of the resolution had led to Iran’s “retaliatory measures” in informing the IAEA it would remove further monitoring equipment. This, he said, had confirmed his assessment expressed before the resolution was raised.
“I could not understand the logic behind this initiative of my western counterparts. I must tell you that last year they tried to do something like those three times – in which case the Russian Federation managed to convince them not to take this step.”
Such persuasion was more difficult in the current climate, Ulyanov conceded, obliquely referring to tensions over Ukraine.
Moscow remained committed, he insisted, to the 2015 nuclear deal (the JCPOA, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) as a “great achievement in the field of” non-proliferation.” He said that the current state of Iran’s nuclear program did not bring Tehran as near to nuclear weapons as some suggested.
“Russia is the strongest supporter of the nuclear non-proliferation regime…we don’t want the so-called ‘nuclear club’ [those states possessing nuclear weapons] to be extended… Speculations about so-called ‘break out time’ [the time it would take Iran to develop a bomb]…are not helpful…If Tehran obtains a sufficient amount of nuclear material – if they don’t have it at this stage – then they will [still] need to produce a nuclear warhead, which will take a lot of time, even if a political decision is taken in this regard.”
However, not all Iranian research and military sites are under international monitoring, and no one can be sure how quickly it can assemble a weapon once it has sufficient fissile material. By most accounts, Iran either already has or will soon amass enough enriched uranium for one or maybe two bombs.
The ambassador noted that while aspects of the Iranian nuclear program were “rather sensitive” that “at this stage we have no reason to believe Iran is looking for nuclear weapons…at least nobody has proved such an allegation.”
Ulyanov argued that Iran, while enriching uranium to 60 percent was not enriching to ‘weapons grade” [90 percent]: “To the best of my knowledge, at this stage they are not going to do that, unless somebody from outside provokes them to take some risky steps.”
But critics of the talks say that as Iran has dragged out the talks it has engaged in nuclear brinksmanship, advancing its program, while claiming it is not after weapons.
France, Britain and Germany condemned on Thursday steps taken by Iran to essentially remove all the monitoring equipment installed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) under the 2015 nuclear deal, saying the move cast a doubt on Tehran's will to revive the accord.
"These actions only aggravate the situation and complicate our efforts to restore full implementation of the JCPoA (nuclear deal)," the three countries said in a statement. "They also cast further doubt on Iran’s commitment to a successful outcome."
Unlike a joint statement made with the United States on Wednesday, Washington did not sign up to Thursday's statement.
The four Western powers who signed the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran tabled a resolution critical of Iran this week at a meeting of the IAEA board of governors in Vienna after the UN watchdog’s director Rafael Grossi submitted a report saying Tehran has been stonewalling in an investigation of its past nuclear activities.
However, US officials on Thursday came up with their separate statements critical of Iran but saying that ultimately the safeguards and IAEA monitoring issues are “separate from the JCPOA.”
“The Board spoke to Iran's safeguard obligations, which are separate from the JCPOA. We are ready for a mutual return to full compliance immediately,” Rob Malley, US Special Envoy for Iran tweeted.
His statement that Iran’s safeguard obligations are separate from the JCPOA raised eyebrows, as Iran’s dismantling of monitoring equipment on Thursday was directly related to JCPOA.
The former Director for Countering Iranian Weapons of Mass Destruction for the White House National Security Council, Richard Goldberg tweeted, “It strikes me as an obvious question to ask any senior official: Can Iran be in full compliance with the JCPOA while remaining in non-compliance with the NPT?”
But Malley’s remark simply followed a statement by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on Wednesday that said, “Iran’s issues with the IAEA and efforts to revive the 2015 deal are “on separate tracks, and that’s how we’re going to proceed.”
This in effect means that if Iran continues its non-cooperation with IAEA regarding its past secret nuclear activities, that will not interfere with a new deal.
The question arises if such a US position undercuts the UN nuclear watchdog’s authority not only in relation to Iran but in the bigger picture of global non-proliferation efforts.
Meanwhile, Iranian officials remained defiant as they annouced they are speeding up uranium enrichment, with more advanced machines.
The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board in a column on Thursday said, “There are few good options when dealing with rogue states that have or want the bomb, but rewarding Iran for its malign behavior is easily the worst. It’s all the more remarkable that the Iranians now seem to prefer humiliating the White House over taking the generous concessions apparently on offer.”
US lawmakers, skeptical of the Biden Administration’s Iran policy, will also take a dim view of developments this week, especially Tehran’s decision to turn off IAEA’s monitoring equipment and warnings that Iran now has enough fissile material to race for a bomb almost immediately.
The Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen Bob Menendez said Wednesday, “Iran now has enough uranium to produce a nuclear weapon. This latest milestone returns us to a familiar question: At what point will the Administration acknowledge that Iran’s nuclear advances make a return to the 2015 JCPOA not in the United States’ strategic interest?”