October 6, 2016 | U.S. News & World Report
Iran Set a Trap
Speaking at the U.N. General Assembly last week, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani charged that the West was flouting its commitments under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal. Despite the opening of “more than 300 new bank accounts with foreign banks,” a spike in oil production, and expectations for GDP growth following the removal of nuclear sanctions, Iran's official narrative remains one of Western – and particularly American – malice.
But before the West rushes to provide additional concessions, it should beware of the snare Tehran has set. Iran's goal is not to ensure Western compliance with the deal, but to facilitate the lifting of those international sanctions still in force against it.
The rhetoric is strategic. Ultimately, it is Tehran's dubious business and banking practices, not Western obstinacy, that is limiting the anticipated post-deal windfall. If anything, far from limiting Tehran's payout, Western governments have redoubled efforts to legitimize Iran's nuclear program. In January, the U.S. offered Tehran “secret exemptions” to skirt certain deal restrictions even as Iran failed to abide by the deal's implementation timeline, and in April reportedly purchased 32 tons of heavy water produced for Iran's Arak reactor.
Tehran insists that foreign (implicitly, U.S.) machinations have undermined the sanctions relief that the deal should have brought. Iranian officials have claimed they have “no fear” of the deal falling apart, and openly discuss how to snap back their remaining nuclear infrastructure if they believe the deal has been transgressed. These critiques form the core of Iran's snapback-centric strategy, one aimed at upping the ante to pocket additional concessions.
The “snapback” mechanism included in the deal allows the countries involved to restore sanctions in the event of Iranian “significant non-performance.” But Iran retains a separate snapback capability that can nullify both nuclear and non-nuclear sanctions: the threat of ramping up its nuclear infrastructure. The fact that the Islamic Republic is able to credibly threaten such snapback means Western audiences will have to reckon with Tehran's complaints.
The foundation for Iran's new strategy was initially laid by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in a public letter to Rouhani in October 2015. Warning against “infractions and deception by the opposite party, particularly the U.S,” Khamenei distorted the deal by implying that it calls for a complete removal of all sanctions. “Any declaration that the structure of the sanctions will remain in force shall imply non-compliance,” he said.
More recently, Iranian officials have activated the second track of this strategy. Starting in the summer of 2016, for example, officials began touting their nuclear options outside of the deal's framework. In July, Ali-Akbar Salehi, an MIT-trained physicist and head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran announced that Tehran had undertaken “necessary preparations … for a quick reversibility” should the deal be violated by the West. A spokesman further boasted that Iran could grow its centrifuge program back to pre-deal numbers in just 45 days. (The deal required Tehran not to destroy its excess centrifuges, but merely put them in storage.)
The next month Mohammad-Javad Larijani, the head of Iran's Human Rights Council (and brother of the speaker of parliament and judiciary chief) laid out a game plan for Iran's nuclear program which calls for making the West believe Tehran could have a breakout capacity of two days. Other components of Larijani's plan include using the U.N. to scrutinize the negotiators' implementation of the accord, and building a “massive nuclear research center” that is “30 percent secret.”
“Westerners do not want to destroy the 'structure of sanctions,'” Larijani said, adding, “We ourselves must kick it and ruin it.” To do so, Iran will likely use its existing nuclear infrastructure as leverage. “We should have not one but several Fordows,” Larijani said, referring to a formerly hidden underground enrichment plant. He acknowledged that Iran's strategy of denouncing the West's supposedly inadequate implementation of the deal “may not be consistent with the American Fact Sheet” – namely the breakdown that Washington released upon reaching the pact that explains its parameters. Iran's metric, he noted, was the “document along with the orders of the [supreme] leader,” which he likened to a separate, but equally valid fact sheet. Larijani was confident that this was a winning strategy, and that the West would not put up real opposition to Iran's overt distortion. As he put it simply, “they don't want to lose” the deal.
Larijani's comments make plain that Iranian officials know the high price they can exact. Tehran is driving to dismantle U.S. non-nuclear sanctions by suggesting that a dramatic increase in its nuclear capability may loom if it doesn't.
All of this serves the supreme leader's interests. Should the West deliver additional sanctions relief, it would do so explicitly to save Rouhani, the putative moderate who is up for re-election in 2017. By putting Rouhani on the defensive, and by having a steady stream of officials decry supposed Western perfidy, Khamenei is betting that the West will come to his aid.
As such, the tables have now turned, and it is now Washington that is being pressed to give up more even ground. The nuclear deal is already heavily tilted in Iran's favor, but Tehran feels it can get even more merely by hinting it might walk away.
Behnam Ben Taleblu is a senior Iran analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies where Amir Toumaj is a research analyst.