[Salon] US-Iran talks on a mini nuclear deal are motivated by mutual convenience, not a desire to rejoin the original accord

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3226148/us-iran-talks-mini-nuclear-deal-are-motivated-mutual-convenience-not-desire-rejoin-original-accord?module=opinion&pgtype=homepage

Washington and Tehran are reportedly discussing a mini-deal regarding Iran’s nuclear programme in an effort to prevent the dispute from escalating into armed conflict
Any deal would mean Iran’s commitment not to further enrich its uranium stockpile. In return, Tehran would want relief from financial sanctions

US-Iran talks on a mini nuclear deal are motivated by mutual convenience, not a desire to rejoin the original accord

Nine months after negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme broke down, Washington and Tehran are reportedly discussing a mini-deal aimed at preventing the dispute from escalating into armed conflict.

The agenda of their indirect talks, spearheaded by Gulf peacemaker Oman since May, has been kept secret, and both sides have denied reports of an interim deal.
But media reports and statements by senior officials suggest a deal would involve Iran committing to not further enriching its uranium stockpile, which is technically one step below nuclear-weapons grade. Inspectors from the IAEA, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, would be granted greater access to ensure compliance, according to the reports.

In return, Iran wants some relief from the “maximum pressure” financial sanctions imposed in 2018 by then president Donald Trump’s administration, after it unilaterally withdrew the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the official title of the 2015 deal to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

The sanctions have made it significantly more difficult for Iran to profit from oil exports and denied it access to the international banking system. The exchange rate of its rial currency with the US dollar has plunged to about one-twelfth of its 2018 value, while inflation is running at more than 40 per cent. In effect, Tehran and Washington are working towards a “restraint for restraint” deal, according to Ali Vaez, Iran project director of the International Crisis Group.
Such a deal makes sense at this point because, ironically, “the one thing that could incentivise Iran to weaponise” would be a pre-emptive strike by Israel or the US on its nuclear facilities, he said in a recent speech at the Stimson Center, a Washington think tank.

An interim agreement is certainly no substitute for rejoining the JCPOA, but it would fit well with Iran’s growing political re-engagement with its Arab rivals, most notably restoring diplomatic ties with Saudi Arabia through a China-brokered deal in April. Here, too, the aim is to reduce the risk of a confrontation in the Middle East after years of proxy wars in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

With its economy crippled by US sanctions, Iran is seeking to improve connectivity with its Gulf neighbours so as to grow its access to international trade and banking networks.
But by claiming that it wants to make economic cooperation the basis of better relations with its Arab partners, Iran is signalling “a major shift in its regional policy”, the Middle East Institute’s Mohammed Baharoon and Alex Vatanka surmised in a paper published by the Stimson Center on June 21.

Centrifuge machines in the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in central Iran. Photo: Atomic Energy Organization of Iran via AP Since seizing power in 1979, “the ruling Islamists in Tehran have often spoken about regional solidarity and stability but de facto pursued ideological aims that relegated economic cooperation to the margins”, they observed.

Its apparent change of heart seemingly meant that Iran had concluded that the “everyday value” of economic benefits in a more connected region would be “much higher” than that of a nuclear deterrent, they said. Like the interim agreement reportedly under negotiation with the US, this requires an improbable leap of faith.

Instead of repenting, the ayatollahs are convinced they have proved they can overcome decades of sanctions and other obstacles erected by their enemies. Clearly, a prospective interim deal between Iran and the US is motivated by mutual convenience rather than any genuine desire by either party to resume compliance of the JCPOA

However, Iran does require breathing space because of its economic crisis. It could no longer “afford to blindly support” its Houthi allies in Yemen and Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, independent Iran expert Waqar Rizvi told This Week in Asia in March.

This very much suits Saudi Arabia, which is desperate to extricate itself from the Yemen war in exchange for an Iranian guarantee that its Houthi friends would no longer target the kingdom with ballistic missiles and armed drones. The Beijing-backed restoration of diplomatic relations between Riyadh and Tehran yielded a new ceasefire in Yemen in April, but negotiations over a political solution to the nine-year-old civil war have not made much progress.

As such, while the political sentiment in the Middle East may have eased as a result of US foreign policy shifts towards China and Russia, the basic realities have not changed.

So Iran under sanctions and international pressure suited the Saudi-led Arab bloc “just fine” because they saw “less of a threat” of increased Iranian influence in the region, Rizvi said.
It also enables the Gulf Arabs to focus on their ambitious “vision” programmes to diversify their economies away from oil and gas revenues as the world transitions to a clean-energy economy.
A stopgap deal with Iran is similarly desirable for US President Joe Biden’s administration, because it does not want to be distracted from its ongoing great-power rivalries.

Nor does it want to aggravate Congress or give Biden’s Republican rivals for the US presidency, Trump and Ron DeSantis, any Iranian ammunition to fire during the election campaign.
Clearly, a prospective interim deal between Iran and the US is motivated by mutual convenience rather than any genuine desire from either party to resume compliance with the JCPOA.
Considering their shared track record of political brinkmanship, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning had good reason to warn on Monday that no such “arrangement would last or provide a fundamental solution”.
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Tom Hussain is an Islamabad-based journalist who has covered South Asia and the Middle East for over three decades.