the end of the jcpoa road? · 10/26/2017 · 5 joint comprehensive plan of action (jcpoa), the...

MIDDLE EAST QUARTERLY Summer 2020 Seliktar: The JCPOA / 1

The End of the JCPOA Road?

by Ofira Seliktar

he July 2015 Iranian nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint

Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), prompted many optimists to assume that Tehran would abandon its expan-sionist, Islamist drive and join the community of nations. But the Obama administration was so desperate for this that it settled for a weak deal that accommodated Tehran’s hard-liners, leading to its eventual rejection by Donald Trump. Five years later, the deal is on the verge of collapse. What consequences does this have for the Middle East and the world?xxxxxxx world?xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The JCPOA’s Critics Upon founding the Islamic Republic of

Iran in 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini vowed to export his revolutionary message throughout the Muslim world via Shiite proxies, or the Axis of Resistance. His aides

realized that nuclear weapons would provide a protective umbrella against attack from the United States and its allies, who would surely oppose Iran’s moves.

In the early 1980s, then-president Ali Khamenei was among a group that oversaw

T

President Obama (with VP Biden, left) announces the signing of theJCPOA, July 14, 2015. The Obama administration settled for aweak nuclear deal with Iran that accommodated Tehran’shardliners.

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Iran was limited to keeping only 300 kilograms of uranium enriched to 3.67 percent; the rest of its stockpile of ten thou-sand kilograms of low enriched uranium was to be blended down to natural uranium levels or sold abroad.5

However, several congress-sional hearings revealed grave problems with the deal, from weak verification and monitoring protocols to Tehran’s refusal to disclose the possible military dimensions and locations of suspected nuclear sites. Sen. John McCain, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that lifting sanctions would bolster “military and intelligence operatives” and their desta-bilizing activities from Syria to Yemen. Senate Republicans tried but failed to prohibit President Obama from waiving sanctions or “otherwise limit[ing] the application of sanctions pursuant” to the JCPOA.6 The deal was so unpopular that the president could not convince the required two-thirds of the Senate to formalize it as a treaty. The agreement even fell short of a simple majority to approve it, so a contrived formula was used instead: Congress voted to disapprove, meaning that Obama could veto the disapproval if a mere thirty-four senators supported him.7

5 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), The

Washington Post, July 14, 2015. 6 H.R. 3460, U.S. House of Representatives, Sept. 11,

2015. 7 “Impacts of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action

(JCPOA) on the United States Interests and the Military Balance in the Middle East,” hearing before the Committee on Armed Services, U.S. Senate, July 29, Aug. 4, 5, 2015; NPR, Sept. 2, 2015.

Outside critics, including prominent experts such as David Albright, founder of the Institute for Science and International Security, and Olli Heinonen, former IAEA deputy director-general for safeguards, pointed out that the inspection regime excluded access to military sites such as the huge base in Parchin where nuclear ex-periments had allegedly been conducted. In their opinion, the IAEA standard for Iran was not as demanding as the one applied to other countries. An analysis of Iran’s nuclear archives obtained by Israel in 2018 con-firmed these misgivings.8

Other observers noted that the Obama team, eager to strike a deal, caved on ballistic missiles. Under tremendous pressure from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps

8 David Albright and Olli Heinonen, “What to do with

the crown jewels of Iran’s nuclear program,” The Hill (Washington, D.C.), May 16, 2019.

The IAEA standard for Iran was not as demanding as the oneapplied to other countries. The inspection regime excluded accessto military sites such as the base in Parchin where nuclearexperiments had allegedly been conducted.

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In addition, the White House took a dim view of IRGC general Qassem Soleimani’s expansion of his network of Shiite proxies. The Obama administration had assumed that the regime would abandon its Axis of Resistance project after the agreement, a prospect that President Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif had suggested might happen but did not. Now flush with cash that had become newly available after the lifting of sanctions, the IRGC expanded Soleimani’s expeditionary Quds Force. By 2018, he largely controlled Lebanon through the Hezbollah proxy; had rescued Syria’s president Bashar Assad; had taken hold of Iraq with the help of local Shiite militias; had developed the Houthis in Yemen into a formidable foe of Saudi Arabia, and had made inroads into Afghanistan. Pompeo said that the JCPOA would need to be revised to account for all three categories of grievances: nuclear enrichment and the sunset clause; ballistic missiles, and the destabilization of the Middle East. To force Tehran to address these issues, the Trump administration

withdrew from the deal in 2018 and imposed the so-called maximum pressure sanctions.12

Tehran’s Maximum Response

As in the previous round, sanctions wreaked havoc on the Iranian economy. The unem-ployment rate rose to 15 percent but reached 30 percent among the young. Oil exports decreased by 90 percent, and the gross domestic product for 2020 was on track to shrink by 80 percent. The IRGC was declared a terrorist entity and its assets were subjected to severe sanctions. All in all, the U.S.

Treasury added more than one thousand Iranian entities to the sanctions list. The misery index soared once again, this time to the dangerous level of almost 76 percent.13 Signs of the breakdown of Iranian society climbed, too. The rates of HIV and AIDS infection are up nine-fold since 2006, an 80 percent annual increase. In 2006, nine thousand people were diagnosed with HIV, but eighty thousand were diagnosed in 2017. Drug addiction expanded from two million users before 2012 to six million in 2019.14 The marriage rate decreased from 550,000 in 2009 to 495,000 in 2019. In 2009, there was

12 Mike Pompeo, U.S. secretary of state, interview,

“After the Deal: A New Iran Strategy,” The Heritage Foundation, Washington, D.C., May 21, 2018.

13 Daily Beast (New York), Jan. 7, 2020. 14 Hamshahri (Tehran), May 25, 2019; Pupils

Association News Agency (PANA, Tehran), Dec. 1, 2019; Iranian Student News Agency (ISNA), May 26, 2019.

Sanctions wreaked havoc on the Iranian economy amid signs of the breakdown of Iranian society. Drug addiction expanded from two million users before 2012 to six million in2019.

MIDDLE E

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would reduce compliance, breaching the stockpile cap on heavy water and enriched uranium (300 kilograms of up to 3.67 percent low enriched ura-nium, the basic ingredient for nuclear fuel). On July 7, 2019, the AEOI re-vealed that uranium enrichment had exceeded the 3.67 percent limit. On September 5, 2019, Tehran declared that it would abandon all restrictions on advanced centrifuges and go ahead with research and development, and two months later, AEOI technicians began injecting uranium hexafluoride gas into some centrifuges in the Fordow facility, a step that would bring Iran closer to fabricating weapon grade uranium. On January 5, 2020, Tehran declared that it would no longer accept any restrictions on the number of centrifuges, that the nuclear program would not be subject to “any operational restrictions,” and that all activities would be based on Iran’s “technical needs.” These carefully calibrated and very public measures were yet another attempt to pressure the Europeans to relieve the sanctions.20

For those in the leadership who had little faith in diplomacy, the military track led by Soleimani was far more attractive. Earlier, during Ahmadinejad’s tenure, several of-ficials threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, a vital, narrow trade route needed to transport roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil on two-fifths of the world’s oil tankers. But even the habitually belligerent Ahmadinejad did not make good on those threats. Tehran still remembered Operation Praying Mantis in April 1988 when U.S. president Ronald Reagan shelled Iran’s offshore oil facilities

20 Tabnak News Agency (Tehran), Nov. 9, 2019.

as punishment for mining the Strait of Hormuz and damaging a U.S. ship.

Soleimani, however, was convinced that Trump, unlike Reagan, would stand down. On July 26, 2018, while speaking at a commemoration for the Iran-Iraq war, he said that starting a war with “a nation of martyrs” would “destroy all [U.S.] capabilities.” He also mocked Trump as a “gambler” with the style of a “casino” or “bar owner” and warned that “we are near you, in places that you cannot even imagine,” an allusion to the infamous terror capabilities of the Quds Force.21

Soleimani took note of Trump’s oft-repeated promise to wind down the “endless wars” in the region. For the IRGC, the 2017 strategy defense review22 confirmed that Washington planned to focus more on China

21 “Iran IRGC Quds Hajj Qasem Soleimani,” YouTube,

Aug 1, 2018. 22 “National Defense Strategy of the United States of

America,” White House, Washington, D.C., Dec. 2017.

When the IRGC shot down a $240 million U.S. drone,Trump refused to retaliate, which emboldened IRGC’sQassem Soleimani (above). Several months later, anIranian attack knocked out half of the Saudi oilproduction.

MIDDLE E

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n February 20

Operation ShaBegin-Sadat

mat Gan, no. 17

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g expert on mology notedaim of intentng casualtiess.30

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ays, the issuety Council,

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ng to three sat required d massive state of the ohe most urgeer Bijan Zantry’s infrastrs in modern020, he said

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i: Iran’s Strategic 20.


In the oil industry, we need to access [foreign] technology and $25 billion foreign investment annually, and if this is not achieved, the problem will spread to other sectors. Because of the sanctions, we do not access [both money and technology].31

He added that the private sector provided minimal investment, and that the National Development Fund of Iran, which had been created to augment the Oil Stabilization Fund, did not have enough resources.32

The banking system was also in trouble. Thanks to decades of mismanagement, cor-ruption, and inefficiency compounded by nonperforming loans, banks had developed a chronic liquidity problem. The Central Bank of Iran had periodically mitigated the crisis with a massive injection of capital, an option cut short by the shrunken resistance budget. Experts, including Adnan Mazarei, former International Monetary Fund deputy head, warned that insolvency might trigger a run on the banks and destroy the economy.33

Iranian banks also ran into trouble with the Terrorist Financing Convention and its watchdog, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which were created to suppress terrorist financing and money laundering. In 2016, on the Obama administration’s rec-ommendation, FATF agreed to remove Iran from its blacklisted states—whose banking systems finance terrorism—if it promised to enact several finance reforms. Still, Rouhani failed to persuade the parliament, which was under pressure from the IRGC, to pass the necessary legislation. So on February 20,

31 Ettela’at, Feb. 16, 2020. 32 Ibid. 33 Adnan Mazarei, “Iran Has a Slow Moving Banking

Crisis,” Peterson Institute for International Economics, Washington, D.C., June 2019.

2020, FAFT put Iran back on the blacklist. It left a small opening, though, by stating that “countries could apply counter-measures independent of FATF.” With thirty-six mem-bers and two regional groups participating, the blacklist would severely restrict Iran’s access to loans and financial aid.34

In addition, water management, ex-acerbated by climate change, created another systemic challenge. In recent years, the an-nual precipitation level has declined sharply; in 2018 alone, rainfall decreased by 20 percent. The amount of water in reservoirs diminished by a third, from 32 billion cubic meters of surface water in 2017 to 25 billion in 2018.

34 “High-Risk Jurisdictions Subject to a Call for

Action,” The Financial Action Task Force, Paris, Feb. 21, 2020.

Central Bank of Iran, Tehran. Due tomismanagement, corruption, andinefficiency, Iranian banks have achronic liquidity problem. TheCentral Bank periodically mitigatesthe crisis with massive injections ofcapital.

MIDDLE E

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MIDDLE E

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iktar: The JCP

d by his owofficials andObama. Ref

heightened dael Defense

d a speciaand to dete

n.44 ure, the regtiations withat Trump loections. Kha

encouraged bsolution Acility to wagamed the Jewnd for wagine has not saia second terg Foreign M

the NPT ifd.45

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nuclear weapabilize the M

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fati, “U.S. MMaximum Pr, D.C., Nov. 54, 2020; Ofira Israel, and theCounter-Prolif

d.: Lexington

POA / 12

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al Iran ect and

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would eement

Maximum ressure,” 5, 2019; Seliktar

e United iferation

Books,


requiring a reduction of ballistic missile de-velopment and the disbanding of its proxy militias. Indefinitely prolonging the nego-tiations may be its only option.

Ofira Seliktar is professor emerita at Gratz College in Pennsylvania. She specializes in intelligence, including nuclear proliferation intelligence. She is the author of ten books and scores of articles and chapters in refereed publications. Her last two books are Iran, Israel, and the United States: The Politics of Counter-proliferation Intelligence and Iran, Revolution and Proxies (with Farhad Rezaei).

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