Ellie Geranmayeh, a political member of the European Foreign Relations Council, said that while unrealistic, the United States and Iran would stop competing for regional influence, “it is reasonable to expect them to remain isolated from the runway. the JCPOA their mutual interest “.
Reciprocal interests are clear. The nuclear deal is the easiest way to achieve the US sworn intention to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. And while Iran is expressing how it can overcome sanctions, it is clear that its economy and Covid-19’s response would be vastly better with its relief.
Biden has surrounded himself with Iranian experts: his secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and CIA chief candidate Bill Burns are imbued with the creation of the original 2015 deal. the only small risk to this pedigree team is that they underestimate the damage Trump’s last four years have done to faith in careful American diplomacy.
Still, Biden seems relatively relaxed about the breathless timetable set by the Iranian parliament and the hard lines for renewing the deal in late February. This has meant enriching Iran to 20% (with the additional threat of a 60% jump by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei).
“Clearly Iran wants to strengthen their leverage. And I think they are playing their hand too much.”
Geranmayeh sees Iran’s escalating movements as “very deliberate and calculated. There is much more Iran can do to regain levels of nuclear activity in 2013, but it has failed to do so.”
Future movements
If we are seeing carefully choreographed movements, even with differently timed music, what will come next? The EU has suggested informal meetings with the US present to try to make diplomacy move a little calmer and faster. Ali Vaez, director of the Crisis Group’s Iran Project, said the proposal has put Iranians “in an obligation”.
Attending without any relief from the sanctions they wish “could be interpreted as proof of their despair in Washington,” he said, “and if they don’t, they could be perceived internationally as the inflexible guilty party.”
Vaez was “cautiously optimistic” that the meeting would take place and Geranmayeh echoed a broad consensus that the “hardliners” who sought to derail diplomacy ahead of Iran’s presidential election in June had been “marginalized.” .
“So far, it seems that the Biden administration is showing less flexibility to move down from its initial negotiating position that Iran must first move to invest in its nuclear activities, while Iran has left the door open to a synchronized process, ”he said.
Vaez said the problem could come later, when Biden’s team fulfills its desire to expand the now-old JCPOA by just about four years until some of its sunset clauses come into force. in something more lasting and broader in scope. Vaez said, “Tinkering” with the deal, let alone fundamentally altering it [its] terms … according to the theory that he has more leverage than the other would be a dangerous gambit “.
Thursday’s strikes on the Iraqi-Syrian border pose no existential threat to diplomacy with Iran. The nuclear deal was designed to address simply the risk of Iran receiving the bomb, and not its broad competition for regional influence and other conventional weapons programs.
Still, they show the region’s habit of unpredictability and how this can jeopardize diplomatic avenues that seem secure and obvious, but that can be derailed by worn-out tempers and escalating retaliation.