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‘Maximum Pressure’ Against Iran Has Failed. What Will Biden Do Next?
A week ago I wrote about Biden's failing foreign policy. With regards to the nuclear agreement (JCPOA) with Iran I remarked:
During his campaign Biden had promised to rejoin the nuclear deal with Iran. But no action has followed. Talks with Tehran started too late and were filled with new demands that Iran can not accept without diminishing is military defenses.
The arrogance of the Biden administration is at full display in its believe that it can dictate the terms to Tehran:
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It is not Iran that left the UN endorsed JCPOA deal. It was the U.S. which went back on it and re-introduced a 'maximum pressure' sanctions campaign against Iran. Iran has said it is willing to again reduce its nuclear program to the limits of the JCPOA deal if the U.S. removes all sanctions. It is the Biden administration that is unwilling to do so while making new demands. That is obviously not going to work.
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If the U.S. does not come back into the JCPOA deal, without any further conditions, Iran will eventually leave the deal and proceed with its nuclear program as it wants. That would be an utter failure of Biden's hardline tactics. One wonders what the Biden administration has planned to do when that happens.
The Biden administration thinks it can tighten sanctions on China's oil business with Iran:
Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman was expected to discuss the prospect of tightening U.S. sanctions on Chinese entities importing Iranian oil when she met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and other officials in Tianjin, China on Monday (July 26), should agreement on a return to the nuclear pact not be able to be reached.
“We have been hoping, we could lift sanctions,” on Iran’s energy and banking sectors, including on Chinese entities purchasing Iranian oil, if the U.S. and Iran could agree on a mutual return to the nuclear deal, the US diplomat said. But “if there is no return to JCPOA…and if we are settling in for a long period of no return to JCPOA,” we will first look at our sanctions enforcement policy, he said.
But this is no longer 2012. Back then China and Russia agreed with the U.S. to put pressure on Iran. That pressure led to the nuclear deal. But today the situation is much different. It was the U.S. that left the deal. Iran, China and Russia are all in a stronger position than they were a decade ago. Why would the later two agree to support Biden's malign foreign policy and unilateral U.S. sanctions against Iran?
The former Indian ambassador M.K.Bhadrakumar draws a similar picture:
[T]he US negotiators drove a hard bargain in Vienna. They underestimated Iran’s grit to secure its core interests. They assumed that given Iran’s economic difficulties, it would bend over backward to get the sanctions lifted. And they began dictating terms and conditions.
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Khamenei, who has the last word on Iran’s state matters, declared last Wednesday that Tehran would not accept Washington’s “stubborn” demands in nuclear talks and again flatly rejected the insertion of any other issues to the deal.
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Having weathered the brunt of Trump’s ‘maximum pressure’, Tehran is in a better situation today. The international situation works in its favour too. Iran has gained strategic depth in the deepening partnership with Russia and China. It is neither possible now to ‘isolate’ Iran nor prudent to exercise the military option against it.
The former British diplomat Alastair Crooke agrees with that view:
The recent accounting of obstacles on the negotiation track listed by Iran’s envoy to the IAEA indeed seems a daunting catalogue of moveable U.S. and EU goalpost: From the original ‘no uranium enrichment’ doctrine; then to a ‘breakout’ horizon of less than one year; and now to that same threshold demand, plus the instance on assurances that Iran will immediately enter into regional and missile talks with the U.S., with any return to JCPOA.
A full post-mortem of the errors leading to this point must await the future. But, for now, U.S. officials insist that it is Iran that misreads its situation; but equally, it may be argued that the U.S. has misread how much the strategic situation in the region – and indeed the world – has changed; and the extent to which the mood of the Iranian people has shifted towards the Principal-ists’ viewpoint, over the period of the last four years.
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Is then, the U.S. threat of an international consensus against Iran – similar to that of 2012 – more plausible? Consensus …?
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Hasn’t Washington noticed that there isn’t one: not even for Washington’s aspiration to stop Russia from bringing its gas to Europe, via Nordstream 2? Haven’t they noticed the fracture in global politics? Yes, Europe is spineless, and will go with U.S., come what may, but that does not amount to a global consensus.
The U.S. attempt to press Iran into a stricter agreement than the nuclear deal Iran had agreed to and the U.S. abandoned has failed.
If the Biden administration does not pull back on its demands, the nuclear deal with Iran will be dead. Domestic pressure to 'do something' about Iran's growing nuclear technology will then increase.
But there is no global consensus to sanction Iran. Russia and China will resist any pressure to support them and Iran will have no reason to change its ways. Nor is there a military option. Iran has serious weapons that can reach any corner in the Middle East.
The Biden administration has driven its Iran policy into a blind alley. The wall in front of it is solid. But how will it reverse to get out?
Looking at the situation from another angle, the “threat of Iran having nukes – and using them”, is far fetched from what we know today. They have nuclear power ambitions, but the use of nukes would entail some sort of finality via a nuclear winter. The Iranians realise that even if the US “big daddyship” (leadership) does not.
However, the key to US foreign policy is knowing what Israel wants. This policy is NOT simply that Iran does not get nukes. Israel needs the “threat” to continue to “justify” their present policies AND hide worse ones at the same time.
ie “Policies” include bombing the neighbours under the pretext that there are Iranians there. (Syria). That there are friends and weapons suppliers from Iran there (Lebanon). US adds Iraq/ as a weapon supplier.
This enables pressure, you know, “because Iran…..”. to be brought on Gulf States. (SA, Qatar, etc.). Now more pressure is being brought on Oman because of the offfshore attacks. (The latest was possibly a false flag, or a contraband effort, More likely the former otherwise how could the “armed men get off the ship and disappear with multiple navies watching”. Maybe their radars didn’t work? .. But I digress.).
Policies include self righteousness by Israel as it carries out the ethnic cleaning of Palestine. If there wasn’t Iran – wouldn’t the world’s MSM HAVE TO talk about the continual brutality of an oppresssive force? On the regular bombing of Gaza, and the deprivations, No electricty, or water on a regular basis. The dispossesion of a population, who are the owners of the land, destruction of meagre resources (agricultural bulldozing and fishing “rules”, restricted imports for 2 million people), injust “laws” set by a military or in biaised courts. Settler violence.
All that and more Israel wants to hide. “So Iran…..”
In sum. It is NOT Iran which is the problem, but Israel and it’s continual flaunting of the principles that should have been learnt at the termination of WWII, at Nuremberg trials, and subsequently in the setting up of the UN?
Here for reference is Principle VI Nuremberg
The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law:
(a) Crimes against peace:
(i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;
(ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).
(b) War crimes:
Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave labor or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory; murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the Seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.
(c) Crimes against humanity:
Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhumane acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime.
Leaders, organizers, instigators and accomplices participating in the formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to commit any of the foregoing crimes are responsible for all acts performed by any persons in execution of such plan.
(My emphasis)
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ALL countries should follow these Principles. As long as one does not, and Israels crimes are not brought to light from under “The cloak of darkness” and seen for what they are – there will not be a return to a JCPOA. As the attention it gets is too useful for Israel as a diversion..
Posted by: Stonebird | Aug 4 2021 20:44 utc | 28
Great analysis, thank you B. After reading your good analysis I thought of a few points that I believe would help shine more light on the matter. So let me go to the meat of the matter by posing two crucial questions:
1. Which direction the JCPOA might be heading to?
2. How does the JCPOA fit into the larger Iran-U.S (and to the larger extent, the Iran-West) relationship in the future?
The JCPOA is currently at a very detrimental point, one which is either 0 or 1. There is no other way around it. Prior to the June election and especially after the leak Zarif tapes (1) which set the record straight by letting everyone ‘understand’ that all strategic decisions from A-Z are made by the SL Ayatollah Khamenei, -not Rouhani and the executive branch in general- the prevailing logic was that the establishment was keen on wrapping the nuclear issue BEFORE the election and allowing Raisi to have a smoother first term presidency by reaping the benefits of the JCPOA re-entry and to not be forced to go through the hardship of meeting/bartering face to face with the 5+1 who had managed to develop good relationship with FM Zarif from 2013 (and even before when Zarif was Iran’s Amb to the UN during Khatami and Ahmadinejad admins). As you mentioned, now the situtation is very different: 4+1 plus the U.S. in SIX rounds of negotiations met a deadlock after the U.S. started demanding more concessions from Iran instead of sticking purely to the nuclear issue by unnecessarily bringing two other issues, A) the regional presence i.e. the Resistance and B) Iran’s domestic missile capabilities. These two are non-negotiable and Iran will never accept to barter them as part of re-entry to the JCPOA. Iran too had and still has been seeking verifiable guarantees namely that the U.S. to never be able to leave the deal again as it did in May 2018 and also lifting UN arms embargo for good and finally the complete dismantling of the sanction SNAP-BACK mechanism of the UN. Iran’s list of demands was finally published to the public for the first time a few days ago which comprised of 10 demands that Iran seeks from 4+1 and the U.S. You can see view them in brief here (2). Interestingly, it was published in the official website of the SL, so take note. You wrote,
“The U.S. attempt to press Iran into a stricter agreement than the nuclear deal Iran had agreed to and the U.S. abandoned has failed. If the Biden administration does not pull back on its demands, the nuclear deal with Iran will be dead. Domestic pressure to ‘do something’ about Iran’s growing nuclear technology will then increase.”
I believe you are incorrect here B, unfortunately or fortunately (depending on which ideological camp one belongs to) Iran is quite a ‘niche’ topic inside the U.S. and the American rank and file do not care about what happens in the ME, let alone Iran, unless they are Jewish (both pro and anti Israel), work in think tanks in D.C. who want to make money by selling policy papers to ‘customers’ or the administration, or the ‘BLOB’ who mostly is comprised of liberal internationalists (R2P types) and the neocons (3). I would even go as far as to claim with high confidence that many in the U.S. believe Iran already has nukes, which tells you a bunch about how ‘informed’ domestic populace in the U.S. are vis-a-vis Iran. So there is no such a thing as domestic pressure to the Biden admin to re-entry to the JCPOA. The ONLY pressure to the Biden re-entry would come from the lib internationalist types and those whose primary motivation regarding the JCPOA was (and still is) a special form of democratization by gradual prosperity and politicization of the Iranian middle-class which from the beginning was met by fierce opposition inside Iran by the ‘PAYDARI Front’ who resemble the neoconservative wing of the conservatives in Iran. Not all Iranian conservatives and IRGC commanders (or Sardars in Farsi) opposed the JCPOA when it was signed in July 2015, the best examples are the IRGC’s No.1 Cmdr. Aziz Jafari, joint chiefs Cmdr., Firouz-Abadi, and even the perennial presidential contender and also a long-time IRGC Cmdr., Mohammad-Baqer Ghalibaf the current Speaker of the Iranian Parliament (or Majlis) (4). It is an open secret in Iran that Aziz Jafari’s congratulation cost him an an ‘early retirement’ from the IRGC a few years ago because of pressure campaign by those who were and still are most opposed to the JCPOA (e.g. the PAYDARI Front) and ultimately a ‘détente’ with the West and viewed him as persona non-grata. Aziz Jafari was and still is a great and competent Sardar under whose leadership and patriotism many advanced projects flourished (namely the reverse engineering of RQ-170 and Shahed 129).
Regarding the 2nd question I posed above, let me answer it in this manner: there was a quote from Alistair Crooke that I found incorrect:
“A full post-mortem of the errors leading to this point must await the future. But, for now, U.S. officials insist that it is Iran that misreads its situation; but equally, it may be argued that the U.S. has misread how much the strategic situation in the region – and indeed the world – has changed; and the extent to which the mood of the Iranian people has shifted towards the Principal-ists’ viewpoint, over the period of the last four years.”
The reality of the matter is that there are 3 major ‘political/voting’ cohorts that exist in Iran: 1.the establishment type with ties both directly and indirectly to the ‘NEZAM’ (or the establishment in Farsi) whose voting pattern is regularly pro-conservative/right-wing; 2. the opposite of the former who mostly are located in bigger cities (much like the Democratic Party-types) such as Tehran, Shiraz, Tabriz, and Isfahan and regularly vote ‘reformist’ or left to center-left WHENEVER the Guardian Council decides to allow certain ‘reformist’ politicians participate in an election. In recent years there has been a meaningful relationship between voter-turnout and the presence of reformist candidates, denoting that voter turnout hikes if there are reformist candidates running. Examples are 1997, 2013, and 2017 elections all of which voter turnout were very high (even at the high 70% and low 80%). 3. the 3rd and final cohort is called the ‘grey’ votes who is more transactional and depending on where the wind is blowing, it would cast its votes either for the conservative or for the reformist camp. This ‘grey’ cohort is very susceptible to populism and usually vote at very very late hours after careful calculations and doing personal ‘pros and cons’ considerations. The winning strategy is one that ‘cooks’ most populist campaign promises to attract the most ‘grey’ votes. For example Mohsen Rezaii a perennial presidential candidate and longtime IRGC Cmdr. promised to pay each family more direct cash subsidy, or another super religious candidate from the city of Mashhad, -a prominent religious city and the site of the Holy Shrine of the 8th Imam of the Shi’ites- Ghazi-Zadeh Hashemi promised a really substantial ‘marriage loan’ to couples hoping to hit two birds with one shot (if you know what I mean!). Fast forward, this year however, Raisi won-with ‘extra help’ from NEZAM (if you get what I mean!) but in a record-low voter turnout (5) in the mid-to-high 40% and with the 2nd place being the ‘invalid’ ballots people cast with around 13% which constituted the highest number of ‘white votes’ in the history of Iranian elections. The running joke these days is that the current elected president’s closes rival was the invalid votes that came second not other candidates, notably Mohsen Rezai or former central bank chief, Nasser Hemmati who was a centrist candidate who did not manage to capture the endorsement of the Reformist camps in the June election for higher voter turnout. More than 50% of the people stayed at home and either as a protest or due to Covid-19 concerns decided not to participate. So In sum, Alistair Crooke is incorrect to suggest that the mood of the Iranian public has migrated to the conservative camp; in fact the recent race clearly shows the opposite. In fact, the former uber conservative minister of Culture during Ahmadi-Nejad’s first admin Saffar-Harandi a few days ago made headlines that he was EXTREMELY happy that most people stayed at home and did NOT vote! because if more people had voted, Ibrahim Raisi would not have stood a chance of winning (or whatever that means!), so he was quite thankful of those who did vote (6). Plain and simple.
Where does the Iran-U.S. ‘imaginary’ relationship go from here? The answer is that the damage of NOT returning to the JCPOA by both sides is very high and in recent days Iran upped the ante and embarked on a naval campaign to raise its negotiation position vis-a-vis 4+1 and the U.S. Iran would not mind to become a nuclear threshold (not actual nuclear-armed state! big difference) state given the fact that since reducing its commitments under the article 36 of the JCPOA it has amassed enough know-how and expertise which interestingly makes the Western position more and more awkward since it was their own massive mistake to pull out of the deal and their current hesitancy to re-enter further weakens their hand vis-a-vis Iran. Whether JCPOA is revived or not Iran correctly and reasonably is motivated to look to EAST (i.e. China and SE Asia) to re-build its infrastructure and economy and the whole modernization program. The West was and still is and will be dominated by nonsense culture/identity wars that will inevitably DESTABILZAE it in the near future. Iran even in the first place could not have ‘looked for answers to its problems’ by pivoting to West because there was nothing worth trying there and Iran’s crucial challenge is modernization not ideology reformism or liberal political re-organization that have no place in the history and culture of the nation. Just take a look at the West and tell me how an up-and-coming nation in dire need of investment, rebuilding of its economy and infrastructure can benefit from importing ‘WOKISM’ inside its borders? How could possibly ‘Wokism’ ameliorate Iran’s problems? How could ‘Wokism’ provide jobs, insurance, and personal dignity to the 85 million Iranians? The answer is that it can’t. France, the birthplace of Democracy has understood that this wokism, e.g. the dustruction of one’s culture history and national identity can lead to chaos and instability, so it is slowly but surely resisting it under Macron in recent months because it already had 5 Republics from 18th century onward and it is trying hard not to see the 6th Republic in the future. On the Eastern front, China strictly rejects the importation/imposition of ideological and socio-cultural issues that the West tout as ‘progress’ and ‘liberation’, and instead correctly and reasonably views them as having dire ‘destabilizing’ effect on the whole of the society they have been tirelessly building since the mid 1970s with so much blood and sweat poured into it all these years. Same wisdom can be seen in Russia’s Putin. Iran must learn from this. Iran can and must pivot to East and especially China because it will find answers there and not in San Francisco or NYC.
I apologize for writing such lengthy comment, I got a little carried away…I guess! I hope you the reader find this comment useful and instructive.
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Footnotes:
1. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/25/world/middleeast/iran-suleimani-zarif.html
2. https://twitter.com/Azodiac83/status/1420450867761852416
3. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/ip.2008.47
4.http://www.rajanews.com/news/207617
5. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/irans-sole-moderate-presidential-candidate-congratulates-raisi-his-victory-state-2021-06-19/
6.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liDDSy8BEVE
Posted by: Russell Kirk | Aug 5 2021 0:01 utc | 55
jiri #71
Which war will happen first? The one against Iran or the one against China?
Neither war will happen. The USA is past it jiri, it is in the same cage as the dead parrot.
I posted this on the open thread but it bears repeating when slavering war lovers gather around the fire: How Taiwan will fall into China’s lap like an overripe mango.
The fashion in naval circles is to talk about the First Island Chain, which is a sort of barrier along the coast of China, the Kuriles, Japan, Okinawa in the Ryukyus, Taiwan, the Philippines, and even Borneo. The idea, apart from some fairly silly notions about “containing China,” is that these islands will want to join with Washington, which is somewhere else, to fight China, which is right there, to defend Taiwan, which also is right there.
Now, who would actually defend Taiwan—that is, go to war with China? Japan? Note that Japan is within missile range of China, and probably does not want missiles of large warhead raining down on Tokyo. Japan gets ninety percent of its petroleum from the Persian Gulf and, If Tokyo’s reserves of oil run out, Japan stops. All of it. China has pretty good submarines these days. The beltway Hawklets might say, “Don’t worry. We have magic anti-submarine stuff, no prob.” Given America’s military record, would you buy a used car from these people?
Do you suppose the Japanese have thought of this?
Just to add to the flogging, consider how the USA warmonger might be viewed by other nations after having seen its flipflop allegiance to Ukraine, Afghanistan, Libya!!! Now Libya alone is enough to make a Valkyrie blush when it comes to duplicity, (Erdoghan is not in the race here).
The Japanese might whisper into American ears, “All cool, Round Eye. But it’s just your empire on the line. It’s our ass. we’ll sit this one out.”
South Korea might think similar thoughts regarding use of its air bases, especially given that the Korean peninsula has a land border with China. Washington doesn’t. Seoul needs a war with the Middle Kingdom like it needs smallpox. “Tell you what, Round Eye, bugger off….”
Taiwan would get wind of this through back channels if not by sheer deduction.
But then there is the mighty, invincible US Navy. The same navy that has lately given up ramming super tankers in the sea of Japan (by mistake that is).
Further, realists in Washington might ask themselves what would happen if the war didn’t go as planned, as wars usually don’t, and a carrier and three destroyers became marine barbecues before sinking. War games and Pentagon studies suggest that this is quite likely. To save face, the hawks would have to turn a regional war into a world war, which America would win. “Win.” Millions would die and the world economy stop. Never underestimate the influence of vanity in world affairs.
Taiwan could divine all of this. It could also divine that the Navy had divined it.
So let us consider what an attack against Iran might look like assuming the humans from the USA don’t actually land there and do a rerun of the Gallipoli invasion of Turkey in February 1915. Unlike Gallipoli the only FUKUSA warships in the vicinity will be disadvantaged by being subject to unexpected water pressure as they lie on the bottom of the surrounding seas. Their skippers and admirals will be wondering where all those Sunburn missiles came from and the air force will be demanding replacement crews and planes asap.
There will be no war in Iran.
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Aug 5 2021 8:16 utc | 90
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