Reviving the Iran deal holds huge risks for Biden

After Tehran’s breaches of the nuclear accord, the US president-elect has already had to harden his position

Now that US president-elect Joe Biden has been given the green light to form his cabinet, his first priority seems to have been to select an administration that can repair relations with Washington’s traditional allies. The new Biden team is keen for America to rejoin international bodies such as the World Health Organisation, from which the Trump White House withdrew over claims that the body was too sympathetic to China’s communist rulers.

Mr Biden has also declared his desire to rejoin the Paris climate accord and has appointed veteran Democrat John Kerry as his climate adviser. Other areas where the new administration will seek to build consensus with Washington’s allies include the problematic issue of China and its increasingly assertive behaviour in the Asia-pacific region and beyond.

Rejoining the controversial nuclear deal with Iran is said to be another of Mr Biden’s priorities. To this end, the foreign ministers of the three European signatories to the deal – Britain, France and Germany – met in Berlin earlier this week to assess the possibility of readmitting Washington to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the agreement’s formal title.

But while Mr Biden should have no difficulty in restoring America’s credentials on feelgood issues like climate change and global health, reaching an accommodation with the ayatollahs with regard to their nuclear ambitions could prove far more problematic, not least because Tehran itself now stands accused of being in breach of the accord.

Ever since Donald Trump withdrew the US from the deal in 2018, Iran has been gradually resuming work on aspects of its nuclear programme, such as enriching uranium, that were prohibited under the terms of the JCPOA.

This was in spite of pleas from the EU3 – the European signatories to the deal – that they would maintain their commitment to the accord and work to alleviate the impact of American sanctions.

European governments – including Britain – have continued to support the JCPOA even though it has failed to live up to the expectations expressed by former US president Barack Obama at the time the deal was signed in 2015 that it would improve relations between Iran and the West.

Instead, the ayatollahs used the tens of billions of dollars Tehran received in return for signing the deal to intensify efforts to expand their influence throughout the Middle East, by supporting the Assad regime in Syria, the Houthi rebels in Yemen and Shia militias in Iraq.

More recently, Iran’s international ostracism has increased after the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN body responsible for monitoring the deal, revealed disturbing evidence that Iran has increased its stockpiles of enriched uranium to 12 times the level allowed by the deal, as well as using advanced centrifuges in the enrichment process that are prohibited.

Iran’s blatant breaches of the deal are said to be the reason why Mr Trump asked the Pentagon to draw up plans to bomb Iran’s main enrichment plant at Natanz, a proposal that was withdrawn after other administration officials expressed concerns about the prospect of military escalation.

Mr Biden, who as Mr Obama’s vice-president was deeply involved in negotiating the original deal, is unlikely to contemplate taking such drastic action. Even so, any attempt by his administration to revive the deal will need first to overcome a number of significant obstacles, not least of which are Iran’s breaches.

Indeed, Mr Biden’s own experience of dealing with the mullahs, and the disappointment the Obama administration felt over Iran’s refusal to adopt a more constructive attitude towards the world after the agreement was signed, mean he will be keen not to get caught up in a game of diplomatic cat and mouse with Tehran.

Thus, while Mr Biden expressed his desire during the election contest to return to the agreement, he has been far more circumspect since becoming president-elect. He now says he will only rejoin the accord on condition that Tehran first resumes strict compliance, terms that have already been rejected by Iran. Furthermore, he says he wants to work with allies “to strengthen and extend [the deal], while more effectively pushing back against Iran’s other destabilising activities.”

This position is not that different from Mr Trump’s, whose primary goal was to negotiate better terms that included other aspects of Iran’s problematic behaviour, such as its ballistic missile programme and constant meddling.

Mr Biden will also need to take care that, by trying to revive the Iran deal in some form, he does not alienate Washington’s allies in the region, where the Trump administration recently succeeded in brokering a peace deal between Israel and the Gulf states. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is as vehemently opposed to the Iran deal as Saudi Arabia, and Mr Biden knows that estranging close US allies for the sake of a better relationship with Tehran would be far too high a price to pay.