Few Silver Linings for Iran in Trump Election
Donald Trump’s shock election as US president raises the real possibility that the United States will now withdraw from last year’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) - the so-called Iran Nuclear Deal - and bring an abrupt halt to US-Iranian rapprochement. President-elect Trump will enter office with one of the least understood policy agendas of recent times, but his opposition to the JCPOA, which he has called a “disaster”, the “worst deal ever negotiated”, and a recipe for “nuclear holocaust” has been consistent. In March, he went so far as to claim that cancelling the deal would be his top priority. If he is so minded, President Trump can quickly achieve this.
President Trump has the power to withdraw the US from the Iran Nuclear Deal on his first day in office. In the face of Republican opposition in Congress, the Obama administration structured the deal as an executive agreement rather than a full treaty, rescindable with a stroke of the new President’s pen. However, such swift measures seem unlikely. Instead, the President-elect has declared his intention to grind the JCPOA down through attrition. On the morning of Trump’s election, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani warned that no single country has the power to overturn the JCPOA, implemented as it is by UN Security Council resolution. Technically, this is true; Trump conceded as much in August, saying he wouldn’t “rip up” UN resolutions. Instead, the new administration seems set to police the deal so zealously that finding some form of Iranian violation, no matter how minor, is all but guaranteed.
“I’ve taken over some bad contracts…I'm really good at looking at a contract and finding things within a contract…I would police that contract so tough that they don't have a chance”. - Donald Trump on the JCPOA, August 2015.
The loss of any Syrian air assets carries a heavy price tag for Assad, and is likely to dissuade his forces from employing chemical weapons again.
How could this be achieved? The JCPOA contains a ‘snapback’ mechanism, and per its terms, any signatory of the agreement may refer a perceived violation of the JCPOA to the UN Security Council for review. The Security Council has 30 days to adopt a new resolution to address the complaint before the pre-JCPOA sanctions resume automatically. Trump’s administration may choose to inundate the Security Council with complaints. Hardliners in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, eager to push the boundaries of the JCPOA as far as possible for their own political and ideological reasons, have provided a steady stream of provocations, including the continued testing of long-range ballistic missiles. Even small deviations from the terms of the JCPOA - a report issued this week by the UN atomic watchdog indicates Iran holds 130.1 metric tonnes of heavy water, rather than the 130 tonnes allowed to it in the JCPOA - will be seized upon by the Trump administration as justification for abandoning the deal. Meanwhile, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has already promised to “set fire” to the agreement should the US show any sign of backtracking. “Say goodbye to the Iran deal”, Richard Nephew, a former US-Iran negotiator, told Reuters this week: “There is very little likelihood that it stays, either because of a deliberate decision to tear it up by Trump, or steps that the U.S. takes which prompt an Iranian walk back.”
If Iran reneges, Trump has promised to “double the sanctions”, but will likely do so alone. China and Russia will not accept an American diktat, and the EU, already taking steps to invest in Iran, will likely defy Trump as well - French oil company Total has already stated that Trump’s election will have no impact on its Iranian operations. Even Britain may avoid reapplying its own sanctions. Nonetheless, US Treasury watch lists and secondary sanctions, already an impediment to investment in Iran, will become more onerous. While agile and specialised operators may be willing to bear the burden, the chilling effect on general investment from Western banks and multinationals will be profound. In Iran itself, a failure of the JCPOA could fatally undermine Rouhani’s 2018 election chances, and lead to his replacement with a hardliner. Iran would be emboldened to resume its nuclear program, inevitably leading it into conflict with a right-wing Israeli government set to enjoy its most unequivocal US support in decades.
It is still unclear how Trump will govern, and how his actions will line up with his mercurial campaign promises. His handling of Boeing’s pending aircraft sale to Iran may offer clues as to whether he’ll embrace the GOP’s reflexive anti-Iranian attitudes. Republicans in the House of Representatives have been staunchly opposed to Boeing’s USD 25 billion plan to export at least 80 planes to Iran, and a House vote on a bill blocking the deal may come as early as next week. The bill is likely to pass in the House, and may pass in the Senate, unless there is a clear statement of support for the deal from the President-elect. It could come; if Trump signalled his support for the deal in line with his commitment to US manufacturing and the economic concerns of his blue-collar base, it would repudiate Republican orthodoxy on Iran and boost US companies keen to invest in the country. If the President-elect allows the deal to fail, it will signal a conventional Republican foreign policy agenda, and US companies are likely to quickly retreat from Iranian exposure.
With the RCP average of polls showing a record 60 percent of Americans disapprove of the incoming president, his political capital - and time - may be more limited than it currently appears. The truism that first term presidents focus on their domestic agenda will likely be even more applicable to Trump, a quasi-isolationist with little experience of or interest in global affairs. Perhaps the self-proclaimed master negotiator really can tear the deal up and lure the Ayatollahs back to the table. Either way, a new chapter is set to open in the fraught history of US-Iranian relations.