France and other European states, interested in keeping the JCPOA in force, appear willing to make use of the remaining weeks before a deadline set by the U.S. Administration of President Donald Trump, for reaching a compromise for pending disagreement between Iran and the U.S., expires on May 12, 2018. The disagreement increased the possibility of withdrawal of both parties from the deal in the coming period, thus paving the way for scrapping the whole deal.
The deal was a main item on the agenda of talks held between President Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron on April 24 in Washington. The French approach is based on demanding Iran reach a supplemental deal to the nuclear agreement in exchange for persuading the Trump Administration into giving a last chance for the deal and extend U.S. sanctions' waivers on Iran once again.
Hence, France, and perhaps Britain and Germany, are likely to put more pressure on Iran in the next two weeks to agree to engage in new talks on points about which the Trump Administration has reservations and because of which it threatens to walk away from the nuclear deal. The most important of these is the so-called "sunset clause", development of ballistic missiles and strict controls on nuclear facilities.
Despite this, there are not enough indications that Washington and Tehran would support these European efforts. The reason is that considerations regarding Iran’s domestic balances of power as well as Washington’s view of what these efforts can eventually achieve.
Tehran’s Options
The government of President Hassan Rouhani does not have much options for dealing with the new approach that Paris will pursue in the coming days. That is, at this juncture it cannot call for accepting this approach and starting new negotiations with the Western powers to reach a supplementary agreement that addresses the points of disagreement in the existing deal.
No doubt, the reason is that its adoption of this position would expose them to adversary campaigns from the regime which set a red line for continuing negotiations with Washington, and even started to threaten to resume development of the nuclear program, to restore the nuclear program to the pre-deal capabilities, including raising the level of uranium enrichment to 20 percent from the 3.5 percent purity to which Iran is committed as per the terms of the existing nuclear agreement.
That is why Rouhani’s government sought to promote, inside the United States itself, that it is necessary to keep the deal in place because it serves the interests of all involved parties.
In this context, the foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif gave a speech at the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations in which he did not rule out a dialogue with the United States in the coming period, based on the need for 'mutual respect'. He even tried to enhance the image of his country as a party which was instrumental in triumphing over ISIS in countries where it had main strongholds.
Zarif appeared to have sought to persuade the U.S. Administration of stopping its strong criticism of the Iranian regime over its development of a ballistic missile program and interference in the internal affairs of other states in the region. This may help enhance the ability of the Iranian government and foreign ministry to promote the possibility of entering into a new dialogue with the Administration without risking coming under strong pressure from the regime’s hard-line institutions that totally reject this dialogue.
But Zarif’s speech was met with strong condemnation in Iran that was reflected in a April 25 editorial in the Kayhan newspaper which hinted that his visit to the United States was for secret goals that are not in line with Iran’s current public policy towards pending issues with the United States.
For the newspaper, Zarif’s speech was largely defensive, because of pressures on, and criticism of Iran from regional and world powers, and only sought to increase the chances of supporting the nuclear deal despite threats and continued pressure from the U.S. Administration.
Such pressures send out an important message to the Rouhani government that it does not have several options as it attempts to protect the nuclear agreement from falling apart, and that it better back counter-pressures that the regime is keen on exerting on Western states seeking to hold new negotiations to reach a supplemental agreement.
It was quite interesting that the regime is keen to ratchet up these pressures during Macron’s visit to Washington, especially regarding the possibility of restoring pre-deal levels of nuclear activity to back his attempts to persuade Trump not to decide to walk away from the deal.
This appears to have prompted President Hassan Rouhani of reaffirming that there is no disagreement between his government and the regime’s other institutions. This was evident in his warning to to the U.S. President, on the same day of his meeting with Macron, that “abandoning the nuclear deal would have severe consequences”. Moreover, he lashed out at the president describing him as a "tradesman not qualified to comment on global treaties.” He also rejected the idea of amending the nuclear accord.
Washington’s Equivocal Position
Equally remarkable is that despite the United States’ insistence on making changes to the current deal, there have been no signs from Washington that it is prepared to accept any positive results that may be achieved by the current efforts of France with support from other European states. More specifically, the U.S. Administration has not clarified what would its reaction be if the European endeavors succeed in persuading Tehran to, for example, “discuss” some reservations made by the United States alone. That is, it remains to be known whether Washington would go for an extension of restrictions on some of Iran’s nuclear activities beyond the current scope stated in the agreement which expires in 2025, or an expansion of inspections by the international watchdog. That is, it is hard to imagine that Tehran would accept to stop developing its ballistic missile program or continue its support to its allies in the region.
That is because the Iranian regime will face hardships that cannot be ignored when it attempts to pass this inside Iran after it raised the ceiling for rejecting unprecedented American and European pressures it came under in the past period. Additionally, several influential institutions, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps in particular, will have the view that supporting efforts to reach a compromise for those issues would prompt the United States, and perhaps the European states at a later stage, to adopt the same policy to wrench more concessions from Iran about other issues.
Based on the above, it can possibly be concluded that the coming days preceding the expiry of the current deadline may witness vigorous European efforts toward saving the nuclear deal. However, so far, there are no signs suggesting that they may succeed in achieving this goal, given the persistent gap in positions between Iran and the United States.
