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Hegemony in the Persian Gulf and the Fate of the JCPOA

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Hegemony in the Persian Gulf and the Fate of the JCPOA Hegemony in the Persian Gulf and The fate of the JCPOA By Heinz Gärtner (Paper presented at the 2021 Annual Convention of the International Studies Association, April 2021) 1 Hegemony in the Persian Gulf and The fate of the JCPOA By Heinz Gärtner Abstract Iran has been at the center of the political debate on both the Gulf region and the transatlantic relations for almost two decades. After the Trump administration withdrew from the Viennese nuclear agreement in May 2018 (JCPOA) that was concluded between the five permanent members of the UN-Security Council (US, China, Russia, UK and France) and Germany on one hand and Iran on the other, the Gulf region and the transatlantic relations have been in a new situation. The JCPOA is the most comprehensive arms control agreement that exists. The real argument of the US-security establishment against Iran appears not to be the nuclear deal but hegemonic competition between the US and Iran in the region, however. For the EU, preserving the nuclear deal with Iran is a matter of respecting international agreements and a matter of international security. The article maps out three future scenarios: all parties, except the USA, stay in the deal; Iran has the feeling that it does not benefit from the agreement anymore and restarts its nuclear program; and the Vienna agreement survives until the dynamics change. The article ends with some policy recommendations on arms control agreements that would include all parties in the region and on limitations of hegemonic aspirations. Iran has been at the center of the political debate on both the Gulf region and the transatlantic relations for almost two decades. After the Trump administration withdrew from the Viennese nuclear agreement in May 2018 (JCPOA) that was concluded between the five permanent members of the UN-Security Council (US, China, Russia, UK and France) and Germany on one hand and Iran on the other, the Gulf region and the transatlantic relations have been in a new situation. 2 The JCPOA The EU-3 (France, Germany and the United Kingdom) and three other UN-Security Council members (US, China and Russia) negotiated an agreement with Iran in July 2015 in Vienna that limited Iran’s nuclear program. Besides major restrictions on Iran’s uranium enrichment, the agreement includes very intrusive verification provisions. Every full stop and comma have been agreed upon. The lifting of nuclear-related sanctions allowing for normalization of trade and economic relations with Iran constitutes an essential part of the JCPOA. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action is, with its 164 pages, the best negotiated arms control agreement in history. The agreement has no time limits on Iran’s ability to acquire nuclear weapons. The timeframe for some restrictions is limited from ten to thirty years. Critics of the JCPOA, like the Trump administration and Israel, called them “sunset clauses”. Other provisions, like those concerning verification in the framework of the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) do not have a time limit. There is a ten-year restriction on new centrifuges, which will not expire until 2025. The twenty-year limit on the monitoring of centrifuges by the IAEA will not expire before 2035. Iran's uranium stockpile reduced by 98 percent must not be exceeded until 2031 and its enrichment must be kept below 3,67 percent for fifteen years. Research and development must take place only at Natanz until 2024. The underground facility Fordo will be converted into a research center and no enrichment will be permitted there until 2031. The twenty-five-year limit on uranium ore monitoring expires in 2040. The implementation of the Additional Protocol, which is part of the agreement, allows for unannounced inspections to be at first provisional and later permanent. As long as Iran remains a party to the NPT, its consent not to proliferate and allow unrestricted access to its nuclear sites for the IAEA will never expire. Furthermore, in the preamble of the JCPOA the parties to the Agreement “ensure that Iran’s nuclear program will be exclusively peaceful” and “Iran reaffirms that under no circumstances” it will “ever seek, develop or acquire any nuclear weapons”. In addition, the JCPOA was endorsed by Resolution 2231 of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) that made it legally binding under international law. Consequently, the unilateral withdrawal of the US from the JCPOA is a violation of international law. 3 It is not an exaggeration to say that there exists no other arms control agreement that would reach the level of the JCPOA in its detail and profoundness of the verification provisions. If the United States had not stepped out of the deal, its importance would have been similar to the NPT concluded in 1968. Beyond this importance, the JCPOA could have become a model agreement for other denuclearization cases, such as resolving the situation around the North Korean nuclear program.1 The JCPOA and its critics US-President Trump withdrew the US from the JCPOA in May 2018 and signed a presidential memorandum to re-impose all US-sanctions lifted or waived in connection with the Iran deal. This move is in contradiction with the UNSC Resolution 2231 that requests to promote and facilitate “the development of normal economic and trade contacts and cooperation with Iran” as an essential part of the JCPOA. President Donald Trump condemned the agreement from the start of his presidency. His behavior and motives were predictable. First, Trump tries to implement his campaign promises of 2016. Second, he wants to reverse every achievement of President Obama. Third, he rejects international, mainly multilateral agreements, like the Paris climate accord, the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) and NAFTA among the US, Canada and Mexico.2 All these three criteria apply to the JCPOA: during the election campaign in 2016 Trump called the agreement “the worst deal ever”; the JCPOA has been negotiated during Obama’s presidency; and the JCPOA is a multilateral agreement. Some European leaders (such as Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron and others) argued that while the JCPOA was not perfect there was no better alternative to it. This argument was intended to please President Trump. It is technically false, however. In general, there has never been an agreement that all the parties would call perfect; any international multilateral deal comes always as a result of a negotiated compromise. The JCPOA is the most comprehensive arms control agreement that has ever existed. For Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump it is not comprehensive enough; to their mind, besides the 1. Leonid Isaev. “The Middle East after the US’s Withdrawal from the Iran Nuclear Deal,” Riddle, November 21, 2018. 2. The follow-up agreement to NAFTA, known as USMCA, is rather a double bilateral deal than a multilateral one. 4 nuclear weapons related provisions it should also include other issues. The conditions under which the US would lift the sanctions on Iran, as listed by US-Secretary of State Micheal Pompeo in May 20183, would require Iran, among others, to stop all uranium enrichment; to allow unqualified access of inspectors to all military sites throughout the entire country; to stop its ballistic missiles program; to end support to Middle East “terrorist” groups, including Hezbollah, Hamas and Houthis in Yemen; to withdraw all forces under Iran’s command throughout the entirety of Syria; and to change its threatening behavior towards its neighbors. It goes without saying that these conditions cannot be met by Iran. Pompeo’s requirements are a distant reminder of Austria’s ultimatum to Serbia before the First World War when Austria, among others, demanded that Serbia opened up its entire territory for investigation after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. No country in the world would give unlimited access to its military sites to foreign forces. To use the analogy further, it would mean that the 2010 New START Treaty between the US and Russia on the limitation of strategic nuclear weapons would have to take into account Russian actions in Georgia, Ukraine and Syria, as well as US actions in the Middle East. Individual treaties can never capture all the issues, especially if they are vague and not verifiable. Hegemonic competition The real argument of the US security establishment against Iran appears not to be the nuclear deal but hegemonic competition between the US and Iran in the region. The 2018 US Nuclear Posture Review which is supposed to address the country’s nuclear strategy stresses this hegemonic aspect: “Iran views US influence in the Middle East as the foremost threat to Iran’s goal to establish itself as the dominant regional power. Iran is committed to increasing its influence over neighboring countries and countering US influence. This goal directly threatens U.S allies and partners, and Iran’s defense policy, strategy, and force structure indicate an attempt to create exploitable military advantages.” 4 3. Mike Pompeo, “After the Deal: A New Iran Strategy” (speech, Heritage Foundation, Washington, DC, May 21, 2018), https://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2018/05/28230.htm 4. Office of the secretary of defense, Nuclear Posture Review, February 2018, 33. https://media.defense.gov/2018/Feb/02/2001872886/-1/-1/1/2018-NUCLEAR-POSTURE-REVIEW-FINAL- REPORT.PDF 5 This goal is not new. Already the Carter Doctrine of 1980 emphasizes that no foreign power should dominate the Gulf region and this should be countered with the use of force5. In this vein, the US and its allies invaded Afghanistan in 2001, Iraq in 2003, Libya in 2011, and Syria. The latter one descended into the chaos of civil war waged among militias, djihadists and external proxies after 2014.6 Regime change or chaos prevent a country from becoming a hegemon.
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