Daily Times

As if the crisis around North Korea’s nuclear program weren’t enough to keep people worried about the state of the world, Trump has raised the stakes even further by refusing to certify the 2015 deal between Iran and six world powers that include five permanent members of the UN Security Council (UNSC) and Germany. Broadly speaking, under the deal, Iran undertook to wind back it’s nuclear program for 10 to 15 years and in return it was given a reprieve from wide-ranging international sanctions. Has the deal worked? The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which is charged with overseeing it, has certified eight times that Iran is scrupulously adhering to it.

In a book review on the subject in The New York Review of Books, Jessica T. Mathews, a Distinguished Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, gives a detailed and comprehensive account of Iran’s compliance. According to her: “Since the deal was concluded in 2015, Iran has gotten rid of all of its highly enriched uranium. It has also eliminated 98 per cent of its stockpile of low-enriched uranium, leaving only three hundred kilograms, less than the amount needed to fuel one weapon if taken to high enrichment.”

Trump believes that Tehran is not complying with the spirit of the agreement. He believes that in any case, Iran will cheat on it. But the fact is this hasn’t happened

She goes on to say; “The number of centrifuges maintained for uranium enrichment is down from 19,000 to 6,000… Continued enrichment is limited to 3.67 per cent, the accepted level for reactor fuel. Iran has disabled and poured concrete into the core of its plutonium reactor — thus shutting down the plutonium as well as the uranium route to nuclear weapons.” And is complying with all the provisions regarding supervision by IAEA inspections.

What then is the problem? Trump believes, Tehran is not complying with the spirit of the agreement. He believes that in any case, Iran will cheat on it. But the fact is this hasn’t happened and is most likely under the strict supervision from IAEA. The deal with Iran is also said to be really bad because it doesn’t cover its other alleged sins like support for terrorism, involvement in the Syrian conflict on behalf of the Bashar regime, aiding and abetting the Hezbollah movement and so on. In other words, Iran is said to be destabilising the Middle East. There are two main real reasons why Trump wants to repudiate the Iran deal, even though it is a multilateral agreement. First and the foremost is that he is doing it because he had, more or less promised the Netanyahu government in Israel that this would be one of his priorities.

There were reports in September 2010 that Israel was on the verge of bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities, as it feared that Tehran was on the point of reaching a technical “point of no return” in pursuit of a nuclear weapon within a few months. Which led the Obama administration to explore a way out lest the US, as Israel’s ally, is dragged into an inferno in a region that was already over-heated. As the US and Iran had no contacts for some decades, it was not surprising that it took time for the whole process of establishing initial contacts that led to the 2015 nuclear deal. Besides, it was done in the midst of strong opposition from the Netanyahu government and its political allies in the US. And in this, the US’ most loyal Arab ally in the region, Saudi Arabia, was opposed to a nuclear deal with Iran as was Israel, pursuing their independent political and strategic interests.

There was a growing belief in Israel and Saudi Arabia that the strong international sanctions’ regime against Iran was biting badly and might bring down the regime sooner rather than later.

And that explained serious political tensions at the time between the Obama administration and its respective allies in Israel and Saudi Arabia over the issue. The turnaround in the relationship under Trump is indicative of a sigh of relief in both Tel Aviv and Riyadh, hoping that it would once again turn Iran into a pariah state seriously damaging it economically and politically. But if the intention is to renegotiate the Iranian nuclear deal to dictate its politics and foreign policy, which seems to be the case, Tehran has already rejected that.

The second reason is that Trump is playing internal politics on the issue by leaving the onus on the Congress to fix it or reject it in 60 days. If not, it will be terminated.

There is a growing belief in Israel and Saudi Arabia that the strong international sanctions’ regime against Iran is biting badly and might bring down the regime sooner rather than later

There is one problem though. The 2015 deal is a multilateral agreement in which the US is only one party and its other signatories, that include Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany, are for upholding it as Iran is observing its provisions, as certified by the IAEA. It is still not clear how other parties to the agreement will act if the US were to nullify it and impose sanctions on Iran. Will they ignore potential American threat of sanctioning their own banks and institutions, if they continue their economic relationship with Iran? Or will Iran go back to its nuclear program once the US decertifies the deal?  Which will lead to the situation as it existed before the 2015 nuclear deal, and that will simply mean further disaster in an already problematic region.

As Wendy Sherman, the lead US negotiator for the Iranian deal under the Obama administration has reportedly said, “How could it possibly be in our national interest to risk Iran resuming its ambitions for nuclear weapons? How does that improve our security?” But like many other things in Trump’s kingdom, this too is inexplicable.

The writer is a senior journalist and academic based in Sydney, Australia

Published in Daily Times, October 24^th 2017.