Eurasia Press & News
What Washington Needs From Nuclear Negotiations With Tehran
Of all the consensus-bucking foreign policy moves that U.S. President Donald Trump has undertaken, few have been more surprising than the resurrection of nuclear talks with Iran. Trump, after all, pulled the United States from the 2015 nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, in 2018. And after four years in which the Biden administration failed to negotiate a deal to replace the JCPOA, the prospects for a new agreement seemed slim. Instead, during those seven intervening years, Iran produced enough near-weapons-grade enriched uranium for multiple warheads.
Yet despite their history of enmity, Tehran and Washington have shown consistent, mutual interest in a deal since Trump’s return to the White House. Over the course of several rounds of talks, the two sides have even sketched out potential frameworks. Both have clear motivations for getting a deal done. The Trump administration wants to restore some strategic stability to the Middle East and Trump is personally invested in bolstering his image as a dealmaker. Iran, still suffering under the U.S. sanctions regime, wants lasting economic relief and a pause in hostilities after the weakening of many of its proxies.
But although Trump has said that he wants to deal with the nuclear issue quickly and insists that an agreement is close, long-standing, core issues between the two parties are likely to bedevil the process. U.S. concerns with Iran’s enrichment program and its funding of proxies will remain a sticking point; so will Iran’s reticence to scale back its nuclear program and its concerns about the durability of any U.S. deal, given that Trump broke the last one. It will be hard for Iran to concede enough to make a nuclear agreement worthwhile for the United States without crossing Tehran’s own redlines.
Even a deal with terms favorable to the United States will have risks and any agreement will require uncomfortable concessions from both sides. But a deal that grants broad oversight over Iran’s declared and undeclared nuclear sites and limits uranium enrichment, in exchange for some sanctions relief, could recapture the benefits of the JCPOA. If carefully negotiated and given enough time to demonstrate results, such a deal would undo some of the damage done when Washington withdrew from the original agreement, prevent a crisis in the near term, and create a foundation on which to build regional stability in the future.
WITHDRAWAL SYMPTOMS
The JCPOA, negotiated by the Obama administration and signed in the summer of 2015, put important restraints on Iran’s nuclear program. It permitted uranium enrichment and other nuclear activities, but under strict limits and tightened international supervision. Under the deal, Iran was to be kept at least one year away from nuclear weapons possession for the foreseeable future. Even though some elements of the JCPOA were time bound, sunsetting at various points over the succeeding two decades, Iran would have emerged from the agreement’s most significant restrictions in 2030 with roughly the same nuclear program as it had in 2015.
The deal, however, had plenty of critics. Many hawks, particularly within the Republican Party, argued that the deal’s failure to roll back Iran’s nuclear progress meant that a patient Tehran still had a path to the bomb. Better, they said, for Washington to confront a nuclear crisis sooner, when Iran’s economy was still reeling from U.S.-led sanctions, than after years of relief. These critics found a receptive audience in Trump, who exited the JCPOA in May 2018, prompting Iran to restart its centrifuge R & D and expand enrichment activities in May 2019.
President Joe Biden attempted to negotiate a return to the JCPOA throughout his administration. But Iran’s leaders, fearing the reelection of Trump, did not trust that Biden could deliver a durable deal. When talks between the United States and Iran faltered, the Biden administration declined to pursue an entirely new agreement, opting instead to avoid escalation. The failure of both U.S. administrations to come up with a replacement for the 2015 deal has been thrown into even higher relief by the news that Iran stands just days away from producing its first nuclear weapons–worth of material if it so chooses.
There are areas of JCPOA’s inspection regime that did not go far enough.Fortunately, elements of the JCPOA can still be applied to a deal that could garner bipartisan support. Chief among them are the original agreement’s transparency tools. Although much of the diplomatic and public discussion about a deal have focused on the future of Iran’s enrichment program, international inspections, using the latest techniques and equipment, are the fundamental element around which any agreement must be structured. Iran must give the International Atomic Energy Agency the access to evaluate whether its nuclear program is peaceful or moving to weapons production. Without enhanced inspections and transparency, no deal—whether it requires the dismantlement of Iran’s nuclear program or not—will last. Consequently, the United States should prioritize getting Iran to agree to the most intense inspections regime possible, at both declared sites and undeclared sites. If Iran will not fully meet the current standard of the IAEA Safeguards Agreement and adhere to its Additional Protocol, a set of IAEA rules developed in 1994 in response to revelations about Iraq’s nuclear program, Washington should walk.
The United States should also demand that Iran accept the JCPOA’s transparency mechanisms related to centrifuges and uranium stockpiles. These mechanisms gave the international community insight into the location and quantity of Iran’s centrifuges (both completed and as manufactured components), as well as the quantity of its uranium. Without this transparency, Iran could easily develop a covert nuclear program, even as it publicly asserts its peaceful intentions. Seven years after the United States exited the JCPOA, Iran has created advanced centrifuges that have permanently reduced its breakout time. It is also capable of building a clandestine enrichment plant with smaller signatures that would be harder to detect and, because of its efforts to bury and harden these facilities, destroy. Worse, after attacks on its centrifuge-associated infrastructure in 2021, Iran stopped providing the IAEA with access to the centrifuge components the government is producing and information on where they are stored. Even if an agreement between Iran and the United States eliminated Iran’s declared enrichment facilities, without intrusive declarations and inspections that focus on the country’s centrifuge manufacturing pipeline, Tehran could still covertly go nuclear. Restoring JCPOA inspection rights would go a long way to correcting this problem.
To be sure, there are areas of JCPOA’s inspection regime that did not go far enough and that a new deal must strengthen. A new deal, for example, should address the challenge of weaponization more directly than the JCPOA did. In Section T of the original deal, Iran agreed not to engage in work on nuclear weaponization or with certain technologies that could enable it, but Tehran was not required to declare existing equipment that could be used in the weaponization process or provide routine access to it to the IAEA. As a result, verification was extremely difficult. Although the United States had to accept this weaker provision in 2015, times have changed. After Israel acquired and publicized documents from Iran’s nuclear archive in 2018, IAEA investigators discovered new sites where Iran had been working on weapons in the past. Since then, U.S. government reports indicate that Iran continues to engage in dual-use work relevant to weapons. Iranian leaders now frequently bandy about the idea of producing nuclear weapons if need be. A deal should thus require that Iran declare any equipment or materials that are related to nuclear weaponization as defined by the Nuclear Suppliers Group. The deal should also require that Tehran let the IAEA verify how Iranian nuclear equipment and materials are being used, with the clear understanding that if the agency’s inspectors were ever stonewalled, Washington would be within its rights to revoke the agreement. This should include, explicitly, access to military sites.
SOAK THE ENRICHED
International transparency is the necessary condition for any new nuclear deal. But it alone is not sufficient. The United States must also demand modifications to Iran’s nuclear program itself.
Some changes should be easy for Iran to accept. In the JCPOA, Iran essentially agreed to end any near-term option for a plutonium-based bomb by modifying its reactor capable of producing weapons-usable plutonium and to refrain from any spent-fuel reprocessing work.
But other changes, especially on Iran’s uranium enrichment program, will be harder for Tehran to swallow. To some extent, Iran’s nuclear progress since May 2018 has rendered some of the restrictions obtained in the JCPOA moot. During those talks, the United States was dealing with Iran’s first-generation centrifuge. It was a machine akin to a teenager’s first car: capable of getting the user where it wanted to go, but not efficiently. Restricting centrifuge R & D was an important win for the United States in 2015. Today, however, Iran can do a lot more with a smaller number of centrifuges.
Iran could reassure the rest of the world that it has no intention of secretly building a weapon by completely dismantling its enrichment program, subject to international verification, which would make it easier to spot secret projects. In light of Tehran’s deal with Russia to supply Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactor with fuel, and in the absence of forthcoming reactors that require a domestic supply of enriched uranium fuel, Iran’s current nuclear program has scant economic value. And although the Trump administration persistently misstates why countries enrich uranium (several countries do so for energy, not for weapons programs), Iran could find more supplies of enriched uranium internationally, if needed.
Ultimately, Washington might have to live with some risk.Iran has long maintained that it will not dismantle its enrichment program, despite all the pressure, threats, and diplomatic entreaties from the United States and its partners, claiming it has invested too much—politically, economically, and socially—to give it up. Enriched uranium also represents Iran’s best bet if Tehran wants to retain a future nuclear weapons option.
Complex proposals to sidestep this issue—whether by setting up a joint enrichment venture between Iran and Saudi Arabia; a consortium with other countries in the Middle East; matching tight restrictions on Iran’s uranium enrichment to its reactor construction; or making esoteric fuel supply arrangements that would have Iran convert its uranium into gas, export it for enrichment elsewhere, then import it back—could still ultimately leave thousands of centrifuges in Iran’s possession. These proposals could also create a population of international monitors at Iranian nuclear sites, who could serve as de facto human shields and deter an international attack if Iran took up illegal weapons production.
Negotiating parties could hammer out more practicable arrangements. But ultimately, Washington might have to live with some risk. Still, an agreement on uranium enrichment would serve a critical purpose for both the Trump administration and Tehran: the United States could accept some enrichment by Iran while strengthening limitations, and Iran could accept those limitations without being seen as completely caving to its sworn enemy.
MORE MONEY, MORE PROBLEMS
Iran’s appetite for more extensive sanctions relief than what the JCPOA provided creates space for negotiations. The United States should thus build its sanctions relief framework on a sliding scale that ties relief to domestic enrichment restrictions.
If, for example, the United States insisted on the long-term or permanent cessation of uranium enrichment in Iran, it could promise Tehran not just relief from secondary sanctions (which punish foreigners who do business with Iran) but also an end to some elements of the U.S. embargo. This deal, for example, might drop sanctions on trade in commercial manufacturing projects and energy while retaining them on military or dual-use technology, the activities of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and Iranian proxies. This would be a bold stroke, similar to Trump’s decision to suspend all U.S. sanctions on Syria in hopes that the new Syrian government delivers on its promises of inclusion and reform. The Trump administration has greater political flexibility to make such an offer than did the Obama or Biden administrations, thanks to the Republican Party’s deference to Trump’s foreign policy initiatives.
Iran has much to gain from substantial sanctions relief. U.S. sanctions have mauled Iran’s economy, limiting its ability to trade or bank internationally and undermining its key industries and infrastructure. They have made it hard to keep electricity and natural gas flowing, severely damaging Iran’s industrial base. Reducing sanctions, then, would increase Iran’s manufacturing capacity while opening it to the foreign financial and technological investment needed to pull the country out of its spiral.
Even limited sanctions relief would come at the expense of other U.S. efforts to counter Iran’s influence in the Middle East, however. Iran would use some of the new revenues to help reconstruct its “axis of resistance,” which has been battered by Israel over the last 18 months. It could also build up its covert action capabilities and domestic military bases, including its missile programs and its naval forces (which could be used to harry shipping throughout the region). Although post-JCPOA U.S. sanctions have not stopped Iran from funding its proxies, which do a lot with a little, the United States would have to accept the possibility that sanctions relief commensurate with significant Iranian concessions could lead to the rearming of organizations it has fought hard to dismantle.
To avoid this outcome, the United States should insist that any deal with Iran include restrictions on Tehran exporting or deploying missiles, drones, and other ranged attack vehicles outside its territory. It could also demand that Iran not interfere in the domestic affairs of other countries in the region. Iran would almost certainly not respect such a commitment, but future violations could serve as a justification for future responses.
MAKING GOOD
Since the United States withdrew from the JCPOA, Iran’s nuclear advances have been significant and dangerous. Tehran now sits on the threshold of becoming a nuclear weapons state and, with the destruction of much of its proxy forces, may feel it has no choice but to cross over. For decades, U.S. policy under Democratic and Republican presidents has correctly aimed to prevent this possibility, through force if necessary. Now, Washington is nearing the moment of truth.
Just because Washington should be prepared to use force to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, however, doesn’t mean that military action is the most desirable outcome. Striking Iran’s nuclear program would likely set off a much larger conflict in which Israel and the United States hunt for covert Iranian nuclear sites and Tehran retaliates in the Middle East and beyond. Instead, the United States should take advantage of its leverage and Trump’s ironclad grip on the Republican Party to make a deal—even an imperfect one—while doing so remains possible. Trump could even make good on his promise from 2018: to secure a better agreement than the JCPOA. His deal would have expanded inspection authorities, limitations on nuclear weaponization–related work, and limits on Iranian support to proxies. Improbably, the administration has a golden opportunity to reach an agreement. It should take it.
