The Fate of an Agreement

۰۸ بهمن ۱۴۰۱ Essays

Essay on Shargh Newspaper - January 28, 2020 -

The original text was in Persian and the following translation was done by Ai.

Is the JCPOA approaching its final stage? What benefit does what is today have from what was? Is the JCPOA, with all its ups and downs, a successful experience for Iran's foreign policy or the failure of a hope? In any case, analyzing what happened with all its weaknesses and strengths is necessary to design the steps ahead.

The reality is that for many reasons, the JCPOA is not a treaty but an action plan. Although the Islamic Consultative Assembly ratified it after the agreement was reached and the US Congress heard the negotiators' explanations, this document is still formally classified as an action plan.

Although today, thanks to the events that have occurred since Trump took office, the opponents have gained the upper hand in criticizing this agreement, it should not be forgotten that, first of all, after four decades of hostile relations, the lack of direct negotiations, destructive propaganda against the other party at home, and mutual suspicion, the only pragmatic way to reach a mutually acceptable result is to take short steps. Steps that simply show mutual goodwill in order to gradually reduce the level of tensions.

The JCPOA was nevertheless a long step because it was a substantive negotiation and agreement aimed at an important issue. For this reason, the length of the negotiations increased, and these images of direct negotiations themselves helped to soften the situation. However, it should be remembered that despite all the positive atmosphere that existed at that time, the rival sections of the officeholders in the governments of both sides - namely, the Republicans in the United States and the Iranians - reacted with all their structural power and social base to any longer step. In fact, despite all the flexibility they showed, the governments were still not ready to take a higher step - for example, signing a treaty - and especially in our country, such an authority was not given to the negotiators.

Therefore, the criticism that is made today against the negotiating team and the government regarding the lack of the Republican Congress's seal on the JCPOA document is purely a domestic political application and does not benefit much from the reality of the negotiations at that time; if this agreement were to be written in the form of a treaty that would be approved by Congress, many other considerations would have to be imposed on it. Due to the cases mentioned earlier, these double impositions that had to be taken into account would have been so heavy that the result would certainly have been unacceptable to the Iranian side. Therefore, the formulation of the negotiations and agreement in the form of a plan of action was a pragmatic decision by both sides, under which they could have more initiative as the negotiating government and, above all, their efforts would be focused on achieving a result, and at least on the Iranian side, this was the maximum discretion given to the negotiators. In addition, with all these characteristics, what we see from the current US president and his behavior regarding treaties confirms the meaning that even if the JCPOA had been approved by Congress despite all the above characteristics, Trump would definitely have withdrawn from it, as evidenced by his withdrawal from such agreements, such as the Paris Agreement.

At another level of criticism of the fate of the JCPOA, there is talk of not receiving guarantees from the US government. The reality is that, first of all, such expectations are only expressed when there is no negotiation to be held, and basically, receiving guarantees in the field of international relations, especially from the dominant material powers of the world and permanent members of the Security Council, is not a realistic expectation. Furthermore, if there were to be any additions to what is currently written in the text of the agreement, the Iranian side would undoubtedly have to make major concessions to the other side. The real question is, what additional concessions are we willing to include in the text of the agreement in exchange for obtaining guarantees - assuming it is possible - from the other countries, especially the United States government?

At the final level of this analysis, it should be emphasized that the JCPOA, although it contains technical legal considerations in terms of form, is in any case a document that was negotiated and published in the space of international relations rather than written in the space of international law. Because the existence of a long-standing political problem between its main parties required that the political will be shown in the first steps to reduce tensions and find ways of cooperation, and logically the negotiations and the resulting text will turn out to be more political than legal. In addition, nothing much has been lost by the political nature of the text, because the international space is an authoritarian space and ultimately there is no obligation to act on any agreement except for political will and national interests in it. Therefore, even assuming the most legal text, if there is a political problem - as we are currently facing - none of the legal clauses would be of use to us. All that is supported by international agreements is to ensure the interests of the parties to remain in those agreements and that is all. Criticisms and legal wrangling in the international political space between two completely hostile parties are of no use and are devoid of any pragmatism.

It should be remembered that today's conditions in the economy and, primarily, in the social and domestic political arena, are the product of the absence of the JCPOA, not its existence. What can be considered the result of the existence of the agreement is the situation of 1994 and 1995, the difference between which is now understood with all our being.

Whether the other side is Trump or anyone else, we cannot stand by and wait too long for events to happen. With the explanations given, we can quickly conclude that resolving the conflicts between Iran and the United States will be possible only by avoiding pendulum approaches, making political decisions, and taking successive, realistic, and pragmatic steps of the kind that happened in the JCPOA. The design of these steps, of course, is in line with the leverage that the parties can create through their own timing and prioritization. Therefore, it can be assumed that given the current atmosphere surrounding the relations between the two countries, the task is more difficult than ever.

If in the first half of this solar year, which began with the numerous trips of the Foreign Minister and ended with the President’s trip to New York, there was an opportunity for the parties to take another balanced step, today, due to the assassination of General Soleimani and Iran’s retaliatory attacks on the Ain al-Assad base, the field of diplomacy is largely in a temporary straitjacket. Although, given the reestablishment of the balance of power – as a result of the attack on Ain al-Assad – if there is political will, the power of diplomacy in Iran and the electoral atmosphere in the United States can still be used, but both the extremism of the team based in the White House has made this issue more difficult than ever, and the higher position that the opponents of diplomacy have found in Iran due to the same extremism.

On the other hand, it should be noted that the most important element in liberal-democratic countries is the ability to persuade public opinion; a problem that Trump faced from the beginning both within the United States and among its allies, especially its European allies. At the beginning of the United States' withdrawal from the JCPOA, almost all of its allies took a stand against the country in response to their domestic public opinion. Apart from the economic issues among those allies that gradually lead to the governments' support, what governments use most to persuade their public opinion is to show the problems of domestic politics, human rights, street protests, and the government's confrontation with them inside Iran. Whatever the origin of what happened in November of this year and after, this will be the best excuse to convince Western public opinion to support the Trump administration. Therefore, it seems that it is up to both the protest groups and the government to face these differences with more intelligence and, instead of presenting an inflamed and highly stressed image of Iran's internal space, to try to fill any gap that may have emerged due to various matters and conditions by softening it. On the other hand, one should not think that by adopting contractionary approaches in the political and social spheres, a united face can be created - which basically must be the reality and not the image - but rather the opposite: political and social expansion and a broad vision that can compensate for economic contraction, create unity in the middle and present its image - untouched and as it is - to the other side as a support for diplomacy; it should be noted that unity is rationally achieved somewhere in the middle.

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