14 May 2019
Where are we at?
There is a lot going on
this week with the US and China at each other’s throats over trade. Thankfully,
and hopefully, the US and China are not close to war. The US trade embargo is
not the same as the oil embargo placed by Washington on Tojo’s Japan prior to
Pearl Harbor, not least because Xi’s China is far stronger in relative terms than
Tojo’s Japan ever was – aircraft carriers, super-battleships and all. The more pressing issue is the growing stand-off
between the US and Iran in the Gulf. Last week the US despatched the
super-carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and
its strike group to the Gulf. It also despatched a missile defence battery and
a bomber group to the region. The US also has some 5000 troops still in
Iraq.
Washington is ratcheting
up pressure on Tehran a year after the Trump administration withdrew from the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, that limited Iran’s nuclear ambitions
in return for the progressive lifting of economic sanctions. If a conflict does
break out it would be a very twenty-first century war with America’s advanced stand-off
strike capabilities facing Iran’s use of proxies and terrorists. One reason
nothing has happened yet is that Tehran is using the sixty days withdrawal notice
permitted under JCPOA to put pressure on the so-called E3 to convince
Washington to ease off. The E3 – Britain, France and Germany – were signatories
to the JCPOA and a conflict would be the first real test of transatlantic
cohesion under Trump. The US and its major
European allies simply disagree over how to handle the Middle East, in general,
and Iran, in particular. Regional strategic implications also abound. Iran’s
regional enemies, Israel and Saudi Arabia, are on full alert. Geopolitics are also apparent. How would Russia,
following its ‘victory’ in the Syria War and ever-more-influential China react
to a US fight with Iran?
How did we get here?
The JCPOA was agreed on
14 July, 2015 in Vienna between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the E3/EU+3.
It states: “The E3/EU3+3 (China, France, Germany, the Russian Federation, the
United Kingdom and the United States, with the High Representative of the
European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy) with the Islamic
Republic of Iran welcomes the historic Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action
(JCPOA), which will ensure that Iran’s nuclear programme will be exclusively
peaceful, and mark a fundamental shift in their approach to this issue”. Whilst the JCPOA concerns the nature and
scope of Iran’s ambitions to build nuclear weapons the Accord was as much about
contemporary geopolitics and the regional-strategic security and stability of
the Middle East.
The JCPOA was 159 pages
long, attesting to its complexity and extensive efforts to build on the
November 2013 Geneva Accord. The main
aim of the Accord was to reaffirm the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as
the essential benchmark for preventing the spread of nuclear weapons to
so-called non-nuclear weapons states (NNWS). Under the agreement Iran was to be
transformed from a so-called ‘threshold state’ into a non-nuclear weapons state.
Iran was also be required to end “possible military dimensions” of its nuclear
programme.
Central to the Accord were
strengthened safeguards and a verification and inspection regime by the
International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA) that was intrusive, even if it
stopped short of ‘no warning inspections’. It was a Safeguards Regime that was
based on, but more extensive than, that agreed under the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty. IAEA inspectors also had the
right to inspect so-called ‘suspicious facilities’. However, because the inspectors were unable to
carry out snap exercises some concluded the Iranians had cheated, most notably
Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu, even though on June 6 2018 the IAEA
reported that Iran was in compliance.
The focus of the Accord
was on preventing the weapons-grade enrichment of both uranium 235 and plutonium. Uranium enrichment was to be curtailed by
reducing the number of operational centrifuges from 19,000 to 5000 and limiting
Iran to the use of short lifespan first generation centrifuges. Medium-enriched uranium was to be rendered
unfit for use in weapons. Some 9700 kg
of Iran’s 10,000 kg low-enriched uranium was also to be shipped abroad. Fordow, one of two main research and
development sites, was to cease all enrichment and become a physics research
centre with no access to fissile material for at least 15 years. The Arak heavy water reactor vital to the
development of weapons grade plutonium was to have its core destroyed and, under
the terms of the Accord, Iran would seek no heavy water production again for at
least 15 years. Iran is now threatening
to abandon those central provisions of the Accord. Specifically, Tehran has
threatened to limit its stockpile of low-enriched (non-weapons-grade) uranium
to 300 kg and its heavy water reserve to 130 tons.
Under the terms of the
Accord the EU, US and United Nations Security Council (UNSC) agreed to lift a
range of trade sanctions and unfreeze some $150 bn of Iranian oil assets held
in foreign banks. However, sanctions
relief was linked to Iran’s compliance over time and thus would only take place
in stages. Critically, there was to be
no complete relief from sanctions until the agreement had been implemented in
full and the Arak reactor destroyed. A
strong so-called ‘snap back’ regime was also put in place that allowed for
sanctions to be re-imposed quickly if the Accord was breached, and without recourse
to a further UNSC Resolution.
On May 8 2018 the United
States withdrew from the JCPOA on the grounds that the Accord was
insufficiently robust and re-imposed sanctions. In a sign of the depth of
transatlantic tensions over Iran and the Accord, on May 17 the European
Commission declared “illegal” the US sanctions on Iran as they applied to
European doing business with Iran, and instructed the European Central Bank to facilitate
investment to Iran.
Assessment
To understand the events of
the past week one has to consider the nature of the Iranian regime and the
respective world-views of President Trump and many Europeans. This is one of
those moments in international relations when all Parties can claim virtue, and
yet all are Parties are at fault. There
is some evidence Iran has been cheating on some of the Accord’s provisions and Washington
(and Tel Aviv) is right to be concerned about that. At the same time, the fact of the Accord was
a political and strategic breakthrough that could in time have led to improved relations
between the West and Iran.
Critical to understanding
current tensions is a key phrase in the Accord reads, “They [the Parties to the
Accord] anticipate that full implementation of this JCPOA will contribute to
regional and international peace and security”.
The Trump administration believes Tehran has made no such attempt to
implement that provision and has decided to exert what it calls “maximum
pressure” on Tehran to change its wider foreign policy. Brian Hook, the US
special representative on Iran, called the US action a “response to Iranian
aggression”. “Everything we are doing is defensive”, he went on. “Iran is still
the leading sponsor of terrorism in the world. If they’re behaving this way
without a nuclear weapon, imagine how they’ll behave with one”.
Critically, the Trump
administration has never liked the JCPOA, which it sees as the leitmotif for Obama’s (and European) weakness
in its dealings with Iran. Indeed, for Trump the JCPOA is a weak ‘deal’ which
Iran won from a weak Administration. There is also no small part of American
domestic politics at play here. Critics also note the timing of the US
withdrawal from the Accord and it closeness to a 2018 visit to the US by
Israeli Premier Netanyahu. Hook says that the US aim is not provoke a war. “We have two goals that overlap”, he states. “One
is that we’d like to get a new and better deal that succeeds the Iran nuclear
deal. It will be comprehensive: nukes, missiles, regional aggression [by Iran]
and human rights”. Hook also claims that Washington is seeking to make “…Iran’s
foreign policy unsustainable”. This probably refers to Iran’s support for
Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, as well as Houthi militias in Yemen.
The timing of this latest
round of tension is also important. For a time Shia Iran was deeply concerned
by the rise of Sunni Islamic State and focussed on the war in Syria. The JCPOA
was partly reflective of Iran’s regional concerns between 2013 and 2017. The
public suspension of Iran’s nuclear ambitions helped to forge an implicit
anti-IS ‘coalition’ at least over the short-term. Those concerns have now
abated and the US clearly has some intelligence to suggest Iran is beginning to
ramp up its nuclear programme again.
The security of Israel is
also a key issue for the Americans. The Accord did not lead to a shift in
Tehran long-standing and extreme hostility to Israel. Indeed, the Americans have long been concerned
that post-sanctions oil-income would bolster Iran’s wider policy of funding and
arming anti-Israeli proxies, and strengthen the role and position of the
Iranian Revolutionary Guard in Syria.
With Hezbollah and Hamas in Gaza restocked and re-supplied and President
Assad in Syria now bolstered Iran the Americans have some cause for concern.
The geopolitics of this
crisis is equally concerning. The Accord was reflective of a struggle between a
rules-based international order and Machtpolitik.
It is the latter that would appear to prevailing as the world teeters in the
balance between a treaty-based world order and a new balance of power and
global disorder. As such the Accord was a modest but important step back from the
brink of Machtpolitik in the Middle
East and its demise (for in the absence of US support its demise is surely now a given) could well herald acceleration
in the regional and, quite possibly, the global arms races both of which are
already underway.
China and Russia? China
has called for the Accord to be implemented in full. At the same time, China
has established a naval base at Djibouti and continues to extend its influence
in the Gulf and the wider Middle East. Russia
succeeded in Syria at the expense of the US and its disparate European allies. The
West is now seen as a busted flush across much of the Middle East.
Where next?
Where next? For Americans
power, albeit under law, is the essence of foreign and security policy, for
Europeans law for law’s sake has become what exists of their collective or
common foreign and security policy. For President Trump, the power of the
presidency to exercise American power in what he sees as the vital American
interest. His use of presidential authority and powers is also the source of much
contention between him and much of Congress. That battle is also apparent in
this conflict.
As for the Europeans, the
EU has become the very embodiment of Europe’s abandonment of hard power as an instrument
of policy. As an aside, Jeremy Hunt, a British prime ministerial wannabe, yesterday
called for Britain’s hard power to be rebuilt. Like most European states these
days, it is questionable if Britain’s hard edge could now survive its soft
virtue-signalling core. The best that might
thus be said of the ‘West’s’ approach to Iran is that the US is playing ‘bad
cop’, whilst the Europeans have cast themselves as ‘good cops’. In fact,
Americans and Europeans simply disagree over how to deal with Iran and the
wider Middle East.
As for the regime in
Tehran, no-one should be under any illusions as to the extent of its
regional-strategic ambitions. Iran is a
Persian, Shia country in an Arab, predominantly Sunni region. There is every
reason to believe that unless contained Iran will continue to use proxy
militias and terrorists groups to destabilise the Arab states to its west and
south. Iran has also not given up on its
ambitions to become a nuclear power, even if (or partially because) Tehran also
fully aware that Saudi money paid for much of Pakistan’s nuclear programme, and
that Riyadh is quite capable of rapidly becoming a nuclear power should (when) the
Accord falter. Iran will certainly seek
to gain from the profound division between the Trump administration and its European
allies.
Within Iran, tensions
remain between relative moderates around President Rouhani, who believe that
Iran’s changing society must accommodate itself, at least to some extent, with
globalisation, and hard-liners in and around the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah
Khamenei and the powerful Revolutionary Guard, who see themselves as the
guardians of the 1979 Revolution.
Equally, it would be far too simplistic to suggest there is a split
between Ayatollah Khamenei and President Rouhani. Iran remains first and foremost an Islamic
Republic with clerical power still the deciding force in Iranian policy-making. The Accord itself reflected an accommodation
between the two factions.
There are some
indications that Iran would prefer to avoid an open conflict with the US right
now. However, whether or not elements of the JCPOA survive this particular
moment of tension the trajectory towards conflict remains unless there is a
game-changer.
Julian Lindley-French
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