The Obama administration has sought, before the end of its term, to send messages of assurance to Iran in an attempt to prevent Tehran from taking steps to escalate the situation politically in response to the US congress’s decision to extend US sanctions on Iran for another 10 years. President Obama preferred to not sign the law, however he did not use his right to veto the law.
This recent symbolic step that Obama has taken suggests two main signs. First, that Obama is seeking to reinforce his objection to the law, and his administration has exerted efforts to convince members of congress to vote against the law, especially members of his own party who oppose the deal. The administration is seeking to smooth any issues that may create more obstacles for the nuclear deal. Second, President Obama has not used his veto powers to object to the law, in light of the chance that congress would annul the veto, as it was supported by a very large majority in congress. This explains the lack of veto and his not signing the law at the same time.
New Deals:
What is most striking, is that this last step came simultaneously with the administrations affirmations that these sanctions would not affect the way in which the nuclear deal would continue working, as it sees the sanctions related to issues that do not pertain to the Iranian nuclear program. While the debate on sanctions raged at Capitol Hill, Boeing signed a new deal with Iran Air on December 11th 2016, to buy more than 80 planes over a period of 10 years, with a net worth of 16.6 billion dollars. There was also an announcement by Farhad Brouch the head of the company, on Nov. 18th, that a deal to buy 100 planes from Airbus was also ready for signing.
It can be assumed that these deals reached by Airbus and Boeing received a green light from the US administration prior to their conclusion and hint that Obama is still gathering any support to keep the nuclear deal alive. His desire to keep the deal alive became evident after he threatened to use his veto power to stop a law congress was hoping to issue in July 2016 in order to hinder the deal, after members of congress accused Iran of allegedly using civilian aircraft for terrorist purposes by transporting fighters and weapons to fight US forces abroad, or against their allies in Syria.
Increasing Pressures:
These attempts however, will most likely fail to send any messages of assurance to Iran for a number of reasons. Most importantly, these steps will only serve to up the pressure on President Rouhani from the Ayatollah and his conservatives.
In the days following the congress’s vote, Khameni sought to keep President Rouhani from being blamed for the results of the deal. He has criticized the idea from the start, and was especially critical of the idea that the US would stick to its commitments. This has given room for the media close to Khameni, such as the Keyhan paper (The World), to conduct a strong critical campaign against Rouhani seeing that the only positive achievement from the deal is that there is no possibility of reaching any understandings with the US anymore. They also claim that the deal has created a number of negative consequences, most importantly, the halting of any progress in the nuclear program for the next 10 years, especially when it comes to the enrichment of uranium from 20% to 3.5% as well as getting rid of the enriched uranium and heavy water that it owned and did not need, and transporting them abroad.
Internal Issues:
The Iranian negotiating team will not be able to hold on to the symbolic gestures taken by the Obama administration as leverage to face up to the pressures that they are being subjected to by the Ayatollah and the conservatives. They have sought to adopt a number of other mechanisms to deal with the extensions in US sanctions, represented by the following:
1. Requesting that the EU Coordinator, Frederica Morghini, conduct a meeting for the nuclear deal oversight committee: this was negotiated by Iran and the G5+1 in order to add international legitimacy to Iran’s rejections for the sanctions, and to state that the sanctions are the responsibility of the US alone in the case of any failure in the nuclear deal. This will only be enacted if the sanctions are applied in the coming period. Furthermore, in the coming period the government of President Rouhani will seek to convince US allies that have helped in reaching the agreement, to pressure the US after Trump takes over the US presidency on the 20th of January 2017. This is in order to defend the decision of extending the sanctions made by the US congress that would hinder the application of the nuclear deal.
2. Affirming Iran’s Commitments towards the nuclear deal: this was during a visit by the head of the IAEA Youkia Amano to Tehran on December 18th 2016. What was worthy of note is that Amano had expressed his satisfaction of the ongoing developments of the nuclear deal. Despite the stated aim of the visit by Amano to conduct negotiations with Iran over the ongoing procedures on some of the specifics of the agreement, this does not deny that there are other goals that the IAEA head sought to undertake from that visit. He most likely sought to ease tensions that had erupted between the IAEA and Iran as a result of criticism leveled by Iran against the IAEA due to it succumbing to political pressure, hinting specifically at pressure from the US.
This comes after the IAEA issued a report in November 2016 stating that Iran had exceeded the amounts of heavy water it was allowed to keep, which was estimated at 130 tons by almost 100 kg. This led to a number of powers criticizing Iran for breaching its agreements similarly to what had happened when Iran had test launched a number of ballistic missiles. In other words, Iran considered the report by the IAEA to be an exaggeration that aimed to provide opportunities to a number of parties to question Iran’s intentions on how well it is committed to the nuclear deal and to not breaking its international commitments.
3. Threatening to continue the development of the nuclear program: this was very apparent in the speech made by the IAEA head on December 17th, where he stated that Iran had not demolished the bridges behind it, noting that Iran could still go back on its commitments and return to pre-nuclear deal levels of enrichment, or even increase the number of centrifuges. In light of this, it can be said that the limits of escalation between Iran and the US, after enacting the extension on sanctions, will serve foremost in the procedures that the Trump administration will take against Iran. This could further help in allowing them to use these sanctions as pressure cards against Iran in the future.
