More Time Without An Iran-JCPOA Means More Problems For The US And World
"Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak, and that it is doing God’s service when it is violating all His laws." -John Quincy Adams
Since Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the original Iran-JCPOA in 2018, tensions have - unsurprisingly - not eased between America and the nation of Iran. While the 45th President inherited a landmark multilateral accord, a reasonably decent economy, and a counterpart in Tehran who was as worldly an Iranian President as any leader of that country since Abolhassan Banisadr, he did not leave the 46th President any of those things by the end of his lone term in office. As Joe Biden has looked to walk a line between confrontation and communication concerning these and other potential negotiations, the circumstances concerning Iran that began deteriorating in the time since the JCPOA was withdrawn from have only continued disintegrating.
Today there is not a former nuclear diplomat sitting as the president of Iran - but an individual who is considered an international human rights criminal from his time as a younger man, most notably in 1988. Ebrahim Raisi is not held in the same esteem as his predecessor, to put it lightly, and he does not behave as his predecessor did either; he wishes for the further Islamisation of Iran and the further regression of the state into something that could be considered more fundamentalist or radical Principlist than what currently exists there.
Meanwhile, Iran could harness nuclear power for weaponized purposes right now if it wished to. Hence, they are farther than ever they would’ve gotten had the JCPOA been abided by instead of cut short. Additionally, Iran aids Russia economically and even with tools for the job of conquering Ukraine - demonstrating poor judgment on the part of Tehran, but, additionally, the lack of control Donald Trump has left the world with concerning Iran.
As new JCPOA negotiations between Iran and the Biden administration have hit various roadblocks and bumps along the way, Tehran has continued to flex the leverage that it believes it has further developed since the remarkably, diplomatically unwise choice of Donald Trump in 2018. That includes the aforementioned, and further discussions with the likes of China and Russia; other innovations in Iran’s relations with some of the most nefarious countries of the world have also been noted by various media outlets.
The signing of the JCPOA had the chance to lead to other marvelous innovations. The destruction of that agreement - and the inability to repair it - can have a similar impact on the international community in a negative sense. For if success and continued success can, in turn, lead to greater, further, and more marvelous innovations being built on top of those initial foundational achievements, then the same can very well be said regarding failures or events that have a certain deteriorating quality attached to them.
The innovation of the original JCPOA had the potential to significantly improve cooperation and relations between the United States and Iran, as well as between all of the involved nations and the greater international community; with the American withdrawal from those accords, along with all of the other painful and sometimes even devastating circumstances and events that have taken place in Iran since, the American-Iranian relationship is not in a good place right now. In fact, as more time goes by without a reimagined and revised JCPOA, things are not likely to improve either.
While the original Iran-JCPOA, was worked on for years by the Presidential administration of Barack Obama, as well as two different Iranian regimes headed by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hassan Rouhani, its destruction was eventually swift. It took four to five years to put the agreement together, and it was finally implemented nearly two years after its original, final agreement, on 16 January 2016.
Alas, despite the acquiescence of Iran to the deal, the satisfaction of the partner nations, and the security the deal looked set to provide all party countries with, it would not last beyond 2018 when the 44th President’s successor, Donald Trump, decided - along with former and present Israeli Premier Bibi Netanyahu and the American president’s Republican colleagues - that the deal was, in fact, not in the best interests of the US, or any of its allies for that matter.
When the 45th President withdrew America from that multilateral agreement over fabricated allegations against Iran and longheld disdain for the massive, multilateral treaty that his predecessor willed into existence - despite the historical barriers - he had no backup plan other than “Maximum Pressure.” That policy - as it had to varying degrees across the vast portion of the previous 40 years - did not bring to bear the desired result for the United States in literally any form or function; Iran as a nation did not crumble at that moment or look to negotiate out of desperation, but circumstances within the nation around this period certainly did change.
The United States would go on to, across this period, re-sanction Iran to varying degrees, and assassinate the leader and general of the elite Iranian Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani, in early-January 2020. And then, things really got intense; the consequences of reneging upon the JCPOA and the following pressure campaign would soon bear sour and wholly unbearable fruit in unforeseeable and completely avoidable ways.
When COVID-19 swept the world and was finally detected as something different and unique than what was usually medically dealt with, the way the Trump administration had been treating Iran made any attempted goodwill gesture regarding medicine, equipment and other health aid seemingly manipulative, relatively pointless, and generally insulting.
Between the external pressure and betrayal exerted upon it by the United States, the poverty that exists in Iran, the renewed sanctions and their effects, the extreme opiate issue that the populace has, along with the additional existential issue of COVID-19, the society of Iran was hurting and chose to - as often happens - make a change concerning natinoal leadership.
Those who, in previous years, might have been labeled as political Moderates within Iran, began to be perceived as radical concerning their demonstrations during what was known as the Dey Protests. Furthermore, the failures that Donald Trump created for Hassan Rouhani when he pulled America from the JCPOA helped the Principlists to further label the Moderates as ineffective as well as radical in their ambitions for change. The combined internal pressures deriving from all of these elements - and still other sources - created a circumstance where the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Guardian Council, and the Assembly of Experts were able to push through hyper-conservative, Principlists across the nation, as well as for that position of President of Iran itself.
Ebrahim Raisi has, in the first year plus of his administration, looked to play hardball with the leverage accorded to him by the former American President, while current American President Joe Biden has done his best to give the impression that he and the United States are somehow impervious to the effects of time and the wrongheaded decision of Donald Trump in 2018. To be crystal clear, America - with all of its power and prestige - cannot negate the accumulated leverage of nations as though none of it ever happened; this nation, for the good of America itself, Iran, and the rest of the world, is going to - in some way - have to take the loss that Donald Trump worked so hard to achieve.
But President Joe Biden and his administration, contrary to the belief of some analysts and pundits, want to negotiate and, in truth, very much wish to get a new deal done - as much for his own legacy as for international progress. They are wary of being called out by conservatives in the Democratic and Republican parties who do not understand how international progress vis-a-vis international diplomacy and relationships must be developed.
Furthermore, Iran is behaving like a nation without respect for JCPOA negotiations, in part because Donald Trump has made any international agreement a matter of American political affiliation by his actions in 2018. Biden is unwilling to bend as far as Iran deems the United States should have to in order to reconcile the agreement, and he only in truth has to bend at all because of the position his predecessor has left the US and the rest of the world in by his largely unilateral maneuvers.
The whole tough shtick of Donald Trump was a great terrible failure during his Presidency because that is not what strength is vis-a-vis foreign policy or diplomacy. Strength - in actuality - is figuring out how to make an agreement work between wary factions and creating something that can positively change the lives of millions of people, and the greater world at large at the same time. Even Trump’s only allies concerning the JCPOA - Israel - are now split into supportive and non-supportive camps regarding the JCPOA - because obviously, and of course they are.
That would be a welcome innovation for the JCPOA, negotiations, and the current President - should Israel as a nation adopt a pro-JCPOA tone finally, as opposed to that which they have long postered with as it regards to Iran. Yet I do not see it, especially with King Bibi returned to the metaphorical throne.
While full of issues and mistakes in his own right, Joe Biden has gotten lots done concerning infrastructure, employment, unions and foreign policy, but is certainly being hobbled all the while domestically by Senate Republicans, those who often take their positions during legislative battles, a slight Republican majoirty in the House of Representatives, and a far-right SCOTUS; concerning foreign policy, the former, 45th President continues to hobble the efforts of his successor - thanks to the baggage that such massive decisions as Donald Trump made regarding Iran over four years would naturally add to any international relationship.
For the 46th President of the United States then, overcoming those Trumpian choices on the international stage must be one of the top objectives of his administration as February turns to March 2023. With the midterm election in the rearview mirror, and spirits running relatively high - even with the strange balloon hubbub that everyone is driven mad by - and a majority of the American population still desirous of a new multilateral treaty with Iran, it is not only a winning foreign policy to pursue, but it also remains a popular domestic policy that could help with the current Presidential polling numbers and perspectives as eyes start to look to 2024.
Mending the bridge that Donald Trump tried to burn with Iran would stop, in that particular theatre, circumstances from further deteriorating, and would be a major legacy-building innovation for the current American President - whatever he decides to do in 2024.
Joe Biden will not likely be able to turn all of the tides that bear down upon him currently. Victories, however, must be searched for and earned where available; concerning Iran, victories would certainly do the American President, the Iranian nation and its people, and the world, a great deal of good.
It would obviously ease tensions between the US and Iran, but it also would give Iran a reason to listen to its populace, who desire both a new JCPOA and for Iran to remain neutral concerning Russia and Ukraine. Furthermore and most importantly of all, it would provide the people of Iran with the relief that they so desperately need from the yolk and barbarism of the sanction regime while ensuring that a positive path towards a more mutual relationship between America, Iran, and the whole entire world exists for international reconciliation without the threat of nuclear weapons or the annihilation that their creation intimates; the longer things go without a path forward, the harder it will be to find a path forward at all.