{"id":91243,"date":"2020-12-19T07:16:20","date_gmt":"2020-12-19T12:16:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/?p=91243"},"modified":"2020-12-19T07:16:20","modified_gmt":"2020-12-19T12:16:20","slug":"auto-draft-379","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/2020\/12\/19\/auto-draft-379\/","title":{"rendered":"Biden and Iran: Back to the old nuclear deal or negotiate a new one?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"DW \u2014 With Joe Biden on board, all parties to the nuclear deal want to bring it back to life. Iran wants to stick with the old agreement but the west may ask for more.<\/p>\n

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It won’t be easy to revive an agreement that took years to strike and was ruthlessly sabotaged shortly thereafter, but US President-elect Joe Biden has pledged to do it. Iran has welcomed<\/a> his intent.<\/p>\n

Earlier this week, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said his country would return to compliance with the nuclear deal<\/a>, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA, within an hour of the US doing so. But that might not be enough.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There is a chance that the United States and European powers ask for more. They may expect Iran to negotiate over its controversial missile program and its regional support for non-state actors \u2014\u00a0which the US and Europe see as destabilizing policies. Iranian officials have said they would only consider negotiating these concerns with their Gulf neighbors.<\/p>\n

If this strife persists, attempts to resurrect the nuclear deal are bound to fail.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"The <\/a><\/p>\n

Iran has breached some of the deal’s limits on its nuclear activities in response to US actions<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The non-nuclear spirit of the nuclear deal<\/h2>\n

“Iran is not living up to the spirit of the [nuclear] deal”\u00a0\u2014\u00a0US President Donald Trump made this remark almost every time he imposed a new sanction on Iran. His officials hammered home the narrative that the nuclear deal was a failure because it did not moderate Iran’s actions in other areas.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Instead of killing the agreement, [Trump] could have built on it to address other concerns,” says Kelsey Davenport, director for nonproliferation policy at the\u00a0Arms Control Association, a US-based nonpartisan organization.<\/p>\n

But he did not. Trump repeatedly said he wanted a new deal with Iran whenever he spoke, one that would cover US allies’ concerns. Still, as Davenport notes, he did not have a viable strategy to replace the JCPOA.<\/p>\n

Now, with Biden indicating the US will rejoin the agreement, calls for a new accord are growing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One voice\u00a0making such calls belongs to German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas. In a recent interview with the weekly magazine\u00a0Der Spiegel<\/em>, Maas said: “A return to the previous agreement will not suffice anyway. There will have to be a kind of ‘nuclear agreement plus.'”<\/p>\n

In addition to Germany, France\u00a0and the UK\u00a0have also signaled\u00a0support for a new deal. In a statement released in early December, the three European parties to the nuclear deal, known as the E3, welcomed “a diplomatic path to address wider concerns with Iran.” On Thursday, the head of UN\u00a0atomic watchdog IAEA,\u00a0Rafael Grossi, endorsed their approach\u00a0by saying: “I cannot imagine that they are going simply to say, ‘We are back to square one’ because square one is no longer there.”<\/p>\n

\"IAEA <\/a><\/p>\n

IAEA chief Raphael Grossi says a new agreement is needed to revive the Iran nuclear deal, western politicians concur<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Pushing Iran for more is a tall order, according to Ellie Geranmayeh, an expert on the JCPOA\u00a0at the European Council on\u00a0Foreign Relations (ECFR): “The only way to pivot towards further negotiations with Iran is to first set a precedent of implementing the nuclear agreement and building confidence within the Iranian political establishment that they can actually get deals with the west in sustainable and durable ways that benefit Iran, too.”<\/p>\n

“Skipping over the 2015 nuclear deal and proposing a wider set of terms and a bigger deal, which Iranians were never willing to accept, even under Trump, is not going to be feasible,” Geranmayeh says.<\/p>\n

Even though the \u2018maximum pressure’ campaign failed to bring results, some Trump officials suggest Biden can take advantage of it. US Special Representative\u00a0for Iran and Venezuela Elliott Abrams is one of those currently\u00a0in the White House who believe the pressure campaign has inflicted huge pain on Iran and that Biden should use it to get a better bargain:\u00a0“We have great leverage\u00a0\u2014\u00a0\u00a0let us use it,” he said in a webinar discussion put on by the United Against Nuclear Iran group this week.<\/p>\n

On the contrary, Davenport sees the scenario facing Biden as being similar to pre-JCPOA\u00a0negotiations: “The United States must first neutralize the growing risk posed by Iran’s violations of the nuclear deal, restore confidence in US credibility by rejoining the accord, and then pursue talks to address these critical issues that fall outside the parameters of the [nuclear]\u00a0deal.”<\/p>\n

Iran: ‘Neighbors only’ follow-up\u00a0negotiations<\/h2>\n

So far\u00a8, Iran has rejected adding any further issues to the agreement. “We will not renegotiate a deal which we [already] negotiated,” said Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif in November at a Rome policy conference.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Iran sees its ballistic missile programs as its principal defense deterrent. Iranian officials often weigh the relatively large military expenditures of their neighbors against Iran’s sanctioned arms and aviation industry. Unless other states in the region agree to the same restraints, Tehran is unwilling to make concessions.<\/p>\n

Tehran’s solution for ending the deadlock is a regional dialogue\u00a0\u2014\u00a0without world powers. Iran’s proposal, the “Hormuz Peace Endeavor” or HOPE, invites its neighbors to discuss their regional security concerns, as Foreign Minister Javad Zarif has written. In lieu of direct involvement of world powers, HOPE calls for a higher international body, such as the UN Security Council, to endorse the outcomes of the talks.<\/p>\n

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