Iran has not been fully dependent on the JCPOA, but it has welcomed negotiations to revive it and has announced that if the sanctions are lifted, the country will fulfill its commitments under the deal.
The reasons behind the non-compliance of the United States with the provisions of the JCPOA are reviewed below.
1. After winning the elections, due to a lack of support from Congress and domestic institutions, Biden gradually dropped his campaign promise to revive the nuclear agreement with Iran. The Foreign Policy magazine in August 2022 highlighted this change in the US president’s policy and wrote that Biden did not reach an agreement with Iran due to the continuation of Trump’s policies and will not reach an agreement again.
Stephen Walt, the author of the Foreign Policy article, believed that what the Biden administration actually did in the Middle East was similar to the Trump era, and his administration’s approach to the Middle East and Iran is basically a mini-Trump approach. In fact, Biden was not able to coordinate between foreign policy institutions in the United States to lift the sanctions, and gradually, by adding more sanctions against Iran, he joined the ranks of the opponents of the JCPOA.
2. With the beginning of the Ukraine war and Russia’s involvement in a war of attrition, the US lost its motivation to continue the talks and lift the unilateral sanctions against Iran. American politicians believed that given Russia’s decline of power due to the war with Ukraine, if the JCPOA leads to the lifting of the sanctions on Iran, the country will become the economic power of the region, and this will threaten the interests of the United States. Therefore, after the war in Ukraine, Washington’s stubborn and ineffective positions towards the JCPOA intensified, and at various times, it tried to introduce Russia as the cause of the pause in the negotiations to restore the JCPOA.
3. The European Union, which did not have a serious impact on the process of reviving the JCPOA, followed the policies of the United States after the Ukraine war and showed that it cannot make decisions independent from the White House. In fact, the war in Ukraine caused the European Union to believe that it should be with Washington in order to secure its strategic interests. This not only removed Europe from the opponents of the US withdrawal from the JCPOA but also strengthened the motivation of the US to weaken the negotiating table and disrupt the road to reviving the JCPOA and lifting the sanctions against Iran. At this point, Robert Malley, who is wrongly introduced as a supporter of Iran in the JCPOA, raised the issue of the military option against Iran. He said in an interview with the editor of Foreign Policy magazine: “We impose sanctions, we apply pressure, we use diplomacy. If none of that works, the president has said, and, as a last resort, he will agree to a military option.”
4. Europe’s cooperation with the United States to marginalize the JCPOA convinced the West to use the International Atomic Energy Agency as leverage against Iran. By passing a resolution in this body, Iran was introduced as the main culprit in the suspension of negotiations due to its non-cooperation with the Agency. Lobbying by the US and Europe caused the Agency to deviate from the technical path to the political path and caused a delay in the process of sanctions-lifting negotiations. Of course, Iran stuck to the path of international standards and regulations as well as cooperation with the Agency, while declaring that it is not seeking to build an atomic bomb and that the West cannot use this as a weapon against Iran’s interests.
5. The existence of some civil protests in the autumn of last year, which at times turned into riots under the direction of the West, made the US and Europe hope for what they called “regime change”. At the same time, America intensified its efforts to hamper the success of the negotiations. American and European authorities naively considered preventing the JCPOA as a form of support for Iran’s riots. They ignorantly took pictures and made democratic gestures next to anti-Islamic Revolution elements. With this wrong calculation, the West did not even condemn the terrorist acts, including the attack on the Shahcheragh shrine in Shiraz, in support of the riots.
6. Another reason Biden stubbornly hindered the negotiations was to deprive Iran of Eurasian opportunities, especially by disrupting Iran’s relations with Russia, China and its neighbors. In fact, the US policy is to reach a bilateral agreement with Iran to exclude the other JCPOA parties and separate Iran from the Eurasian powers. Indirect negotiations with Iran through the Persian Gulf countries for the exchange of prisoners and the release of part of Iran’s income are also aimed at circumventing the JCPOA and not fulfilling its obligations, especially the lifting of the JCPOA and post-JCPOA sanctions.
The JCPOA is a binding document and Iran’s wise policy as a country that has never withdrawn from the deal is based on “commitment versus commitment”. This policy is based on international principles and standards, is understandable for the remaining JCPOA parties, and is one of the provisions of this agreement. America’s failures show that it is still the main culprit for the non-implementation of the JCPOA.
Based on this, maintaining the negotiating table on the part of Iran to use the opportunity to release Iran’s frozen assets, planning to increase all-round cooperation with Russia, China, and neighbors despite the existence of some differences, and strengthening relations with the Eurasian Union, the Shanghai and BRICS organizations is a right and strategic choice that will strengthen our position against the West.
(The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect those of IRNA)
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