36 United States The Economist June 4th 2022
The zombie nuclear deal
F
our monthsago the Biden administration appeared to have
decided it was now or never for Iran’s blighted nuclear-con-
tainment deal. Negotiated under Barack Obama then abrogated by
Donald Trump, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action needed to
be salvaged—as the administration hoped it would be—or else
abandoned. Because time-limited, the strictures that the seven-
party agreement placed on Iran’s nuclear programme would have
had diminishing utility even if the Iranians had abided by them
after America walked out. And they did not. Iran has enriched 18
times the quantity of uranium permitted under the deal, some of it
to weapons-grade levels. “You can’t revive a dead corpse,” warned
Rob Malley, Joe Biden’s chief negotiator on the issue.
Thejcpoanow looks even more terminally challenged. Instead
of returning to mutual compliance with America, the Iranians is-
sued a new demand: that Mr Biden remove their Islamic Revolu-
tionary Guards Corps from a list of terrorist organisations. He
balked at that, and the negotiations, conducted by European third
parties, have since been stuck, even as Iran’s illicit centrifuges
continue to whirr. Appearing before the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee on May 25th, Mr Malley said the prospect of Iran re-
turning to the jcpoalooked “at best, tenuous”.
The deal’s potential benefits have continued to shrink, mean-
while. Its “sunset clauses”, which from 2025 onwards would
steadily free the Iranians of most constraints on their nuclear pro-
gramme, are not the only reason for that. The nuclear know-how
they have accrued over the past three years would ensure that,
even if persuaded to give up their uranium pile, they could reas-
semble it twice as fast.
Back in 2015, when the jcpoawas signed, the Shia state was
thought to be potentially months away from a nuclear breakout
(that is, from having enriched enough uranium to make a nuclear
bomb). The deal was expected to extend that time-frame by a year,
with intrusive international surveillance that could alert the
world to any breaches. If Iran wanted to break out today, it is esti-
mated that it could do so now in a few weeks. Returning to the deal
could at best stave that off by around six months.
Yet instead of ditching the moribund deal, the administration
is still pursuing it. “We thought that, by February or early March,the deal would no longer be worth the sanctions relief. We have
reached a different assessment,” says a senior administration offi-
cial. What explains this apparent change of heart?
In part, the war in Ukraine, which has made the administration
especially averse to risking conflict in the Middle East. Three si-
multaneous nuclear dramas, in North Korea, Ukraine and Iran,
would be a lot. Yet the administration’s shifting rhetoric mainly
denotes a failed negotiating tactic. Modest, and unlikely, as a
warmed-up jcpoawould be, the administration has seen no good
alternative to it. The evidence suggests there isn’t one.
For the jcpoa’s detractors—including almost all Republicans
and some Democratic senators—the opportunity cost of the ar-
rangement, as they viewed it, outweighed the gains. In return for
constraining its illicit nuclear programme, Iran was given sanc-
tions relief; it was meanwhile free to engage in all sorts of rogue-
state behaviour outside the ambit of the jcpoa. The rationale for
Mr Trump’s decision to scrap the deal and load Iran with new sanc-
tions—a policy he described as “maximum pressure”—was that
this would force it to mend its ways generally. Yet Iran’s conse-
quent rush to nuclearise is only one of the ways in which it has not
done so. It also doubled down on its ballistic-missiles programme
and regional troublemaking—including attacks on Saudi Arabia
and on American and allied troops based in Iraq. “The alternative
theory jcpoacritics advanced was given a chance,” Mr Malley said
in his testimony. “It failed.”
The deal’s critics are undaunted by that reality. Senate Republi-
cans have introduced bills to re-politicise the issue, including one
by Ted Cruz forbidding Mr Biden to re-enter the jcpoa. It got no-
where; yet he and other hyper-partisan Republicans view the issue
as a win however it turns out. Failure to resuscitate the pact would
make the Biden administration look ineffectual. And if it succeeds
it will not only have recommitted itself to a weaker version of what
Mr Trump described as “the worst deal ever”. Mr Biden would also
be forced to give away more leverage than Mr Obama did—in the
form of Mr Trump’s many additional sanctions, which are still in
place. The Republicans, concedes the senior official, are “licking
their chops” over the prospect of such a gift.
This represents more than an argument about leverage and
America’s dwindling ability to impose its will on the world
(though it is certainly that). Democrats consider it merely the lat-
est example of Republicans ducking responsibility for serious
problem-solving in favour of a relentlessly oppositional search for
political advantage. As on gun control, climate change, health-
care reform and other big issues, this has led to another sort of di-
minishing return. Democrats earnestly cobble together an imper-
fect solution; Republicans trash it, making the problem worse;
which in turn makes the Democrats’ follow-up solution even fee-
bler, so even easier for the Republicans to trash. And thereby
America’s—and in this case, the world’s—problems mount.There is no Plan B
The Biden administration is plainly committed to reviving the im-
perfect, now weakened, nuclear deal. That is commendable—
there is indeed no good alternative. At the same time, it must half-
dread the issue being brought to a head, either way, ahead of this
year’s mid-terms. There is no political advantage in it, only ran-
cour. This would appear to present the Iranians, in whose court
thejcpoaball now lies, with an interesting choice. If they wanted
to exert maximum pressure on the creaking American political
system, they should probably re-enter the deal pronto.Lexington
Iran’s defunct nuclear-containment pact has contaminated American politics