An amendment to the nuclear deal with Iran was nearly agreed in March and was agreed in August, but now few people seem to believe it will be honored. Experts describe the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) situation as comatose at best and probably already dead. Despite several rounds of negotiations in Vienna since 2021 and close to a breakthrough, the United States and Iran remain critical to maintaining regional security and deterring Iran from building a nuclear bomb. A pact that has long been described by its proponents as having failed to revive.
“While in a deep coma, the JCPOA is not dead. At least neither party wants to declare it dead. This would be an admission of foreign policy failure.” said Mark Fitzpatrick, Associate Fellow of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. But others were more pessimistic. “It’s hard to imagine a deal being restored,” said Ali Baez, Iran’s representative and senior adviser to the International Crisis Group. Elie Geranmaier, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and deputy head of the Middle East and North Africa programme, said it was hollowing out more than ever and that there was “little room for optimism” about its resurgence. added. Farzan Nadimi, an associate fellow at the Washington Institute, said the deal was essentially closed.
If the JCPOA does indeed disappear, what happens next? Iran is already a nuclear marginal state and may soon produce nuclear weapons. The region could plunge into an arms race, escalating a dangerous espionage game between Iran and Israel. There may even be a military confrontation involving the United States.
An amendment to the nuclear deal with Iran was nearly agreed in March and was agreed in August, but now few people seem to believe it will be honored. Experts describe the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) situation as comatose at best and probably already dead. Despite several rounds of negotiations in Vienna since 2021 and close to a breakthrough, the United States and Iran remain critical to maintaining regional security and deterring Iran from building a nuclear bomb. A pact that has long been described by its proponents as having failed to revive.
“While in a deep coma, the JCPOA is not dead. At least neither party wants to declare it dead. This would be an admission of foreign policy failure.” said Mark Fitzpatrick, Associate Fellow of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. But others were more pessimistic. “It’s hard to imagine a deal being restored,” said Ali Baez, Iran’s representative and senior adviser to the International Crisis Group. Elie Geranmaier, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and deputy head of the Middle East and North Africa programme, said it was hollowing out more than ever and that there was “little room for optimism” about its resurgence. added. Farzan Nadimi, an associate fellow at the Washington Institute, said the deal was essentially closed.
If the JCPOA does indeed disappear, what happens next? Iran is already a nuclear marginal state and may soon produce nuclear weapons. The region could plunge into an arms race, escalating a dangerous espionage game between Iran and Israel. There may even be a military confrontation involving the United States.
Tehran has previously been accused of deploying proxies to attack US assets in the region and target US allies. Iranian political experts say that without continued nuclear talks, Tehran could increase the ferocity and frequency of these attacks.
In turn, the United States and the European Union will impose more sanctions, increasing room for Israeli covert sabotage of Iran’s nuclear power plants, and the early scrutiny of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Israel’s opposition to Iran. May encourage defense alliances. The West could even consider direct military intervention.The Biden administration came to power very hostile to former President Donald Trump’s policy of “maximum pressure” on Iran, but an equally hostile “Plan B” is currently being discussed. next step It envisages penalties for Chinese entities importing Iranian crude oil, as well as the possibility of potentially attacking Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, such as refueling tankers for long-range airstrikes. is accelerating the delivery of a major defense system to Israel.
European diplomat who spoke with foreign policy On condition of anonymity, he said he expected Iran to be ready to build, or at least quickly build, nuclear weapons if efforts to revive the deal were in vain. (U.S. military) intervention,” he said from his office in Brussels, to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Vaez added that if Iran went in that direction, he would leave the United States with two unacceptable options.
It is not widely believed among US intelligence agencies that Iran has already decided to build a bomb, says Géran Mayet of the European Council on Foreign Relations. However, many experts we spoke to say that the odds of the JCPOA officially collapsing would skyrocket. Western capitals were already reeling from Iran’s response to the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal by bringing its uranium enrichment closer to the threshold needed to build a bomb. Few doubt that if the deal is not restored, Iran could increase its enrichment to 90% of hers, reducing breakout time (the time required to build a bomb) to just a few weeks.
“Iran will continue to produce more highly enriched uranium, operate more sophisticated centrifuges, and limit IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) oversight, while adhering to the language of the pre-JCPOA safeguards agreement.” said Fitzpatrick. “The aim is to pressure the United States to lift sanctions and bring Iran closer to building nuclear weapons.”
US President Joe Biden has said the US is ready to use force against Iran as a “last resort”. However, some analysts believe he would prefer a more creative diplomatic approach instead of using maximum pressure or waging a full-scale war. Limited military capabilities combined with single measure negotiations with Tehran. For example, the International Crisis Group Proposed In exchange for Iran enriching its existing uranium stockpiles to 60%, the United States could partially unfreeze Iran’s overseas assets.
But the deep mistrust that undermined the Vienna talks is likely to cast a similar cloud over future agreements. It says that painstakingly worked out compromises still fail to bring the two sides together. His one of the controversies revolved around his IAEA investigation into Iran’s nuclear activity at three of his sites that had not been declared. Iran has demanded an end to the investigation and recently provided the IAEA with access to the site, but the IAEA is also seeking details about what happened to the uranium found there. “If the uranium in question flows into stockpiles under IAEA safeguards, and this can be verified along with the status of related equipment, the problem may be resolved, even if the IAEA is unable to ascertain the truth. Why was the undeclared uranium there in the first place,” Fitzpatrick said.
However, neither the experts nor diplomats FP spoke to believed Iran would provide the information as it could incriminate itself. Iran sees the investigation as an open-ended search, based on information passed to her IAEA by its arch-nemesis Israel, which has opposed passage of the agreement from the beginning.
The delisting of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization, while outside the scope of the JCPOA, was inserted as Iran’s request earlier this year. media report In August, Iran suggested it had dropped the request, but European diplomatic sources said Iran still insists.
More recently, the willingness to resume talks with Iran in Washington and Brussels has waned after Iran supplied drones to Russia. deployed have devastating effects on Ukraine and subsequent civilian targets protest Inside Iran, we have encountered deadly forces from gangs of riot police and plainclothes security forces. The deadlock in negotiations is also fueled by Iran and the US each reassessing their respective influence in the negotiations. Iran believes it has gained more bargaining power since the war in Ukraine led to soaring oil prices, and desperate Western powers are likely to make concessions in order to bring Iranian oil back onto world markets. Meanwhile, the US wants to wait and see how the protests sparked by the death of Martha Amini, a 22-year-old woman who was arrested for not wearing her hijab properly, will affect the stability of the Iranian regime. thinking about.
Some analysts argue that had the JCPOA been revived and benefiting Iran’s economy, these mass protests might not have escalated. Still, Iran’s hardline president, Ebrahim Raisi, has shown he is in no rush to reach a deal. “We succeeded in neutralizing [U.S.] Often they impose sanctions,” he said. Said at the United Nations General Assembly in September. “The maximum pressure policy has suffered an embarrassing defeat. , tweeted that Iran would persevere. “Winter is approaching and the EU faces a devastating energy crisis.” He said.
But the US and its partners claim they have presented the best offer. “The room for negotiations has been exhausted and a final document considering all aspects is under consideration. The document will not be renegotiated,” European Union spokesman for foreign affairs Peter Stano told FP. Meanwhile, Iran continues to enrich uranium and evade IAEA surveillance. “Time is not on our side,” he said, “now is the time to make political decisions.”
