Most of the recent discouraging news about the talks between Iran and world powers has focused on the substantial disagreement regarding Iran’s uranium enrichment capacity. The two sides differ sharply on how much enrichment capacity Iran requires, how much it should be allowed to maintain once [...]]]>
Most of the recent discouraging news about the talks between Iran and world powers has focused on the substantial disagreement regarding Iran’s uranium enrichment capacity. The two sides differ sharply on how much enrichment capacity Iran requires, how much it should be allowed to maintain once a comprehensive agreement is reached, and how quickly it should be allowed to expand that capacity over the agreement’s timeframe (the length of which is itself another contentious point).
However, while this dispute could sink the chances of reaching an agreement on its own, the focus on enrichment masks another and perhaps equally volatile issue: the process through which Iran will receive sanctions relief if a deal is reached. This question not only factors into the terms of any comprehensive accord, but also carries enough uncertainty to potentially cause any final deal to break down in the future if expectations on either side are violated. This issue was the focus of a July 8 panel discussion at the US Institute for Peace (USIP), “Iran Sanctions: What the US Cedes in a Nuclear Deal,” moderated by the USIP’s Robin Wright and including Suzanne Maloney of the Brookings Institution, Kenneth Katzman of the Congressional Research Service, and Elizabeth Rosenberg of the Center for a New American Security.
The duration of a final deal is, as Maloney pointed out, a “sleeper issue” in the negotiations, which are quickly approaching the July 20 deadline. Negotiators from the P5+1 (the US, UK, France, China, and Russia plus Germany) want to maximize the length of time that Iran’s nuclear program will remain under international monitoring while delaying sanctions relief for as long as possible. Iran, understandably, wants considerable immediate sanctions relief and a minimum duration final deal. The two sides will surely compromise on a deal that lifts sanctions progressively, with relief tied to specific Iranian activity under the terms of the accord. But the devil is always in the details, and working out the specific timetable for sanctions relief and the steps to which it will be pegged is certainly among the more difficult challenges the negotiators are facing in Vienna. This process is made all the more complicated by the fact that the US has been imposing sanctions on Iran since its 1979 Islamic Revolution, for reasons that have had nothing to do with Iran’s nuclear program. For example, Iran’s support for the militant Lebanese group Hezbollah was used as the justification for some of the earliest and strongest US sanctions against Iranian banks, and those sanctions are unlikely to be altered if a final deal is reached.
The issues of uncertainty and misunderstandings regarding sanctions relief, and the potential for this to threaten the stability of a final deal, were widely discussed by the panelists. Iran wants, and President Hassan Rouhani needs, substantial sanctions relief to boost an economy that continues to suffer from high inflation and high unemployment as well as economic sanctions. In a practical sense, as Katzman noted, the initial round of sanctions relief will have to be fairly sizable; there is no benefit to Iran if, for example, the deal lifts caps on Iran’s oil exports without also allowing Iranian companies and banks to properly access the international banking system. In a strictly legal sense, American sanctions against Iran could be quickly suspended via executive waiver, which must be renewed every six months but does not require Congressional approval in the way that a permanent lifting of sanctions would.
However, the actual speed with which companies would do business with Iran will likely be slowed by a number of complicating factors. These include concerns over the sustainability of the agreement, the stability of the Iranian regime, and the ability of Rouhani’s administration to reduce corruption, according to Rosenberg. But the primary complication will undoubtedly be uncertainty over the precise nature of the sanctions relief and the different sanctions regimes that countries, chiefly the US, will continue to levy against Iran. Rosenberg noted that there will be a period in the wake of a final deal in which companies will need to figure out the limits of sanctions relief to Iran, particularly navigating the differences between European and US law.
It may prove difficult or impossible to separate American sanctions that were put in place specifically as a result of Iran’s nuclear activity, which would be dealt with under the terms of a comprehensive accord, from those related to other issues like Iran’s support for Hezbollah, which would be untouched by such a deal. Iranian negotiators will likely be satisfied with a deal that allows European firms (especially banks) to do business in Iran again, but if those firms are still wary of other remaining sanctions, they will remain reluctant to pursue opportunities in Iran. In practical terms, then, sanctions relief will be a slow process. For an Iranian public that, as Wright pointed out, expects a deal and wants benefits quickly, such a delay could damage both US credibility and the Rouhani presidency, and could even collapse the overall framework of a final deal.
]]>by Derek Davison
The challenge of rebuilding the once strong but now broken ties between the United States and Iran was the topic of a June 3 Atlantic Council event, “US-Iran Relations: Past, Present, and Future.” The discussion, moderated by Barbara Slavin, included John Marks, founder of the international NGO Search [...]]]>
by Derek Davison
The challenge of rebuilding the once strong but now broken ties between the United States and Iran was the topic of a June 3 Atlantic Council event, “US-Iran Relations: Past, Present, and Future.” The discussion, moderated by Barbara Slavin, included John Marks, founder of the international NGO Search for Common Ground, and former Iranian diplomat, Seyed Hossein Mousavian. Much of the event focused on Mousavian’s insights from his time as a member of Iran’s nuclear negotiating team (2003-05), and his involvement in talks between the US and Iran on combatting Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan in late 2001.
Mousavian identified three distinct stages in Iran’s historical relationship with the United States. From 1856, when the first treaty between the two nations was signed, until 1953, when the CIA participated in a coup that overthrew the elected government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh and replaced it with the autocratic rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, US-Iran ties were friendly, albeit not extensive.
Mutual distrust
Iranians believed that the American people and their government supported Iranian reform and anti-colonial efforts (an American missionary, Howard Baskerville, was killed by government forces while participating in Iran’s 1909 constitutional revolution). But the 1953 coup, and the response by the US and UK to Mossadegh’s plan to nationalize Iran’s oil industry, represented a fundamental shift in America’s policy toward Iran. Where it once opposed colonialism and autocracy, America, as a co-sponsor of the coup and as the Shah’s new great power patron, was now, as far as Iranians were concerned, fundamentally identified with both. According to Mousavian this period of “dominance,” ended in 1979 with the Islamic Revolution and the hostage crisis. Hostility has been at the root of US-Iran relations ever since.
There are many reasons to believe, as Mousavian does, that the current state of hostility between Iran and the United States cannot be maintained. The international sanctions that have been levied against it to force the government to agree to limits on its nuclear power program are not meant to last forever. They rely on an international consensus that is almost unprecedented and can be disrupted by any discord among the P5+1 member nations (US, UK, France, China, and Russia plus Germany).
Sanctions have severely damaged the Iranian economy, which President Hassan Rouhani promised to fix during his 2013 election campaign. Politics aside, the human cost of sanctions is also growing by the day. The progress that has already been made in the nuclear talks makes the current moment critically important; if negotiations break down now, it’s difficult to see a way forward without a resurgence of the debate here over military action.
Amidst the debate over how much uranium enrichment capacity Iran “needs” and how much it actually wants, or the dispute over modifications to the proposed heavy-water reactor at Arak, the basic, almost insurmountable challenge to the nuclear talks is that the US and Iran simply do not trust the other side to abide by the terms of a final settlement.
Washington, which maintains diplomatic relations with every country it fought a war with in the 20th century apart from North Korea, is unable to move past the 444 days from 1979-81 in which Iranians held 52 Americans hostages in Tehran, despite the fact that no American hostage was killed in the process. The Iranians meanwhile remember the US’ role in the 1953 coup and its support for Saddam Hussein during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War. Mousavian argues that broken American promises have also contributed to Iranian (and particularly Revolutionary Guard) mistrust. The IRGC worked to secure the freedom of Americans taken hostage in Lebanon in the 1980s, and likewise cooperated with US military actions in Afghanistan post-9/11 because, according to Mousavian, American diplomats promised that those efforts would lead to closer US-Iranian ties. In both cases, though, those ties never materialized.
Comprehensive negotiations
The solution, as Mousavian sees it, is for the US and Iran to engage in talks on a broad, comprehensive range of issues rather than focusing only on Iran’s nuclear program. He suggests starting with those areas where the two countries’ interests are broadly aligned: the need for stability in Afghanistan and Iraq, the fight against regional drug trafficking, the effort to contain Salafi extremism and to combat Al-Qaeda-style terrorist movements, and the need for security and stability for Persian Gulf shipping.
These talks can be supplemented with what Marks characterizes as informal, “person-to-person” diplomacy, especially cultural and scientific exchanges, perhaps eventually leading to formal apologies — from the Iranians, for the hostage crisis, and from the Americans, for the 1953 coup and the 1988 downing of Iran Air Flight 655. Once rapport has been built on these areas of common ground, the two sides can begin to tackle more challenging issues, such as (from the US perspective) Iran’s support for Bashar al-Assad in Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon, its relations with Israel, its ballistic missiles program, and its human rights record.
While Mousavian may be right that a comprehensive approach to US-Iran talks would be preferable to the current process, there’s a problem: comprehensive negotiations will take a very long time. The fact is that the current state of affairs around the nuclear talks will resolve itself, one way or another, long before any comprehensive US-Iran talks have a chance to achieve anything. Likewise, the crisis in Syria, which continually threatens to engulf the region, is too immediate a problem to be part of an extensive long-term framework. Mousavian accordingly suggests a two-track approach, where issues of critical, near-term concern are handled in a multi-lateral way, while longer-term, more comprehensive bilateral talks are undertaken. This may not be ideal, but it’s possible that such an approach could have real benefits. As he points out, the nuclear talks, specifically the P5+1′s recognition of Iranian needs with respect to uranium enrichment, offer a blueprint for progress (to wit, the US being receptive and responsive to Iran’s wishes) on a range of other issues.
This is a critical point for the possibility of renewing US-Iran relations. Regional stability requires Iran and the US to find a way of cooperating together, and the resurgence of Salafi extremism and terrorist groups in the region has aligned the interests and incentives of both countries. But working toward that stability requires a considerable commitment to open, comprehensive negotiations before this potentially vital relationship can be repaired.
Photo: After decades of no contact between high-level US and Iranian officials, a historic meeting between US Secretary of State John Kerry, left, and Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif occurred on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting in New York on September 13, 2013 — one month after Iran’s presidential inauguration of the moderate cleric, Hassan Rouhani.
]]>by Derek Davison
As talks aimed at a comprehensive nuclear deal with Iran continue, with principals from Iran and world powers meeting in Vienna this week, two recent analyses of the negotiations have compared the talks to a “Rubik’s Cube.”
A May 9 report from the International Crisis Group [...]]]>
by Derek Davison
As talks aimed at a comprehensive nuclear deal with Iran continue, with principals from Iran and world powers meeting in Vienna this week, two recent analyses of the negotiations have compared the talks to a “Rubik’s Cube.”
A May 9 report from the International Crisis Group (ICG) entitled, “Iran and the P5+1: Solving the Nuclear Rubik’s Cube,” offers 40 recommended action items that Iran and the P5+1 (the US, UK, France, China and Russia plus Germany) could agree to implement in a comprehensive deal. Today the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) also held a panel discussion called, coincidentally, “The Rubik’s Cube of a Final Iran Deal,” moderated by Colin Kahl, the top Middle East policy official at the Defense Department for most of Obama’s first term, and featuring Robert Einhorn, who served as the State Department’s special advisor on non-proliferation and arms control until less than a year ago, Joe Cirincione, the president of the Ploughshares Fund, and Alireza Nader, an Iran expert at the RAND Corporation.
There’s a clear sense in both analyses that a deal is reachable. Cirincione rightly pointed out at the USIP event that the current talks are “the closest we’ve come to an agreement, ever,” and predicted that “absent some unforeseen event, we are going to get a deal.” Indeed, the very existence of something like the ICG report, a specific and detailed look at what a deal might actually contain, would have appeared presumptuous even six months ago but now seems very reasonable given the progress that has already been made.
However, optimism aside, a great deal of work still needs to be done before a deal can be finalized. The level of detail contained in the ICG report speaks to the complexity involved in the negotiations. The ICG recommends, for example, an immediate cap on Iranian uranium enrichment of 6400 Separative Work Units (SWU, a measurement of enrichment capacity that incorporates both the number and technological advancement of operational centrifuges) per year, which is a steep cut from Iran’s current 9000 SWU/year capacity (that Iran sees as already too low), and one that the Iranians may be unwilling to make. That cap would then be lifted, over 8-10 years, to around 19,000 SWU/year, an increase that could theoretically reduce the time it would take Iran to manufacture a nuclear weapon if it chose to pursue that goal. Of course, it remains to be seen whether Iran and the P5+1 would agree to those terms.
The ICG framed its recommendations around four points:
But the ICG’s recommendations, and the discussion on the USIP panel, make it very clear that these objectives will be difficult to meet in a way that satisfies both parties. The two sides disagree on even basic elements of the talks; as Kahl explained, the Iranian government rejects the P5+1’s continued focus on Iranian “breakout capacity” because it has officially sworn off of any military application of its nuclear program. The P5+1 does not accept those assurances, but Iran also has legitimate questions as to why other countries with civilian nuclear programs have not been subject to the same requirements that Iran has faced.
The USIP panel seemed to reach a general consensus that the biggest remaining hurdles to a comprehensive deal revolve around Iran’s uranium enrichment program. This includes both Iran’s capacity for enrichment and the amount of enriched uranium it will be allowed to stockpile; the level of access that Iran will permit to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and its inspectors; and the timing of and conditions for sanctions relief.
The P5+1 are seeking to maximize the limits on Iran’s nuclear program and the IAEA’s access to Iranian nuclear sites while maintaining sanctions at a high level for a considerable period of time, perhaps decades. Iran, obviously, is seeking the opposite – minimal limits on its nuclear program in return for considerable sanctions relief and only a short period in which its program is subject to international monitoring. As the ICG report put it, “it would appear that the P5+1’s maximum — in terms of both what it considers a tolerable residual Iranian nuclear capability and the sanctions relief it is willing to provide — falls short of Iran’s minimum.”
The single biggest complication to these talks is the utter lack of trust on both sides. As Nader argued, mutual trust is not a requirement for success and the lack of trust can be worked around with stringent inspections requirements and firm commitments to agreed-upon sanctions relief. But that lack of trust adds considerable complexity and difficulty to the negotiations. Iran is ultimately being asked to prove a negative, that it has no nuclear weapons program, and because the P5+1 do not trust Iran to uphold its promises, demands for monitoring requirements and caps on nuclear capacity may simply be too much for Iran to accept.
This is particularly true given a domestic political environment that Nader termed “poisonous,” with Iranian hardliners increasingly concerned about President Hassan Rouhani’s commitment to protecting Iran’s interests in these negotiations, and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s support for the talks vulnerable to shifting political winds.
Iran will also have difficulty trusting the P5+1 to uphold its end of a deal to reduce sanctions assuming that Iran meets, and continues to meet, its obligations. Indeed, Cirincione pointed out today out that western banks, fearful of running afoul of sanctions laws, have still not released the Iranian assets that were unfrozen under the terms of last November’s “Joint Plan of Action.” The challenge of getting a final deal through a potentially hostile US Congress, particularly in an election year, could also give Iran reason for concern.
Yet failed talks could be disastrous for both sides, according to the ICG. Failure now would make another attempt at negotiations very unlikely, would result in new punitive measures against Iran (including new sanctions on an already sputtering economy, and potential military strikes on Iranian nuclear sites), and could ultimately push Tehran to rush for a nuclear weapon, something which everyone, including Iran, says they don’t want.
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