25 MAY 2019|THE INTERREGNUM|MOHAMED ELMAAZI
As Donald Trump increases his aggressive posture towards Iran, special advisers to former US president Barack Obama warn that his unrealistic hopes for a “better deal” may be leading to a “ruinous chain of events”.
Featured image via The Real News Network and France 24
On 8 May 2019 Philip Gordon and Robert Malley, both special advisers to former US president Barack Obama on the Middle East, penned the article Tensions with Iran are escalating into a dangerous chain of events. Almost as though to reinforce their concerns, on 24 May 2019 The US secretary of defense confirmed he approved sending:
“approximately 1,500 U.S. military personnel [which] consist of a Patriot battalion to defend against missile threats; additional intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance aircraft; an engineer element to provide force protection improvements throughout the region; and a fighter aircraft squadron to provide additional deterrence and depth to our aviation response options.”
All this is apparently to protect against the “ongoing threat posed by Iranian forces in the region”. Despite repeated claims from US officials that the US ‘does not want war with Iran’, experts say the policies of Trump’s government are nonetheless bringing that possibility ever closer.
Deliberately escalating tensions with Iran
Writing in the Washington D.C. establishment outlet The Hill, Gordon and Malley argue that:
“Recent United States actions on Iran almost seem to have been designed to force Iran to quit the [Iran nuclear] agreement.
In May 2018 Trump illegally withdrew from the Iran Nuclear Agreement (officially the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action -JCPoA), and by November 2018 slapped Iran with all encompassing economic sanctions. The ostensible objective of these actions is to pressure Iran into accepting a “better deal”. He claimed that the JCPoA, “failed to achieve the fundamental objective of blocking all paths to an Iranian nuclear bomb” and didn’t deal with Tehran’s, “malign activities, including its ballistic missile programme and its support for terrorism”.
Escalating US provocations towards Iran
Gordon and Mally explain that:
“Over the past few weeks alone, the administration designated the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps a terrorist group, ended the waivers that allowed a handful of countries to purchase Iranian oil without running afoul of American sanctions, and announced that the United States would penalize countries engaged in certain nuclear activities that are designed to allow Iran to implement the agreement.”
They refer to US sanctions on Iran as “American economic warfare”, and warn that Iran may ultimately end up responding to it militarily.
The JCPoA was signed by the US, Russia, China, Britain, France, and Germany (P5 +1) and Iran in 2015. Even long-time US allies, the UK, France, and Germany, have jointly affirmed that the International Atomic and Energy Agency:
“has confirmed in 12 consecutive reports that Iran is abiding by its commitments under the Agreement”.
And while the rest of the P5 + 1 nations want the agreement to continue, they have yet to find a way to help Iran avoid the worst effects of US sanctions.
A nonsensical strategy
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s main presidential rival in 2017, a far-right candidate who was known to be backed by Iran’s theocrat-in-chief the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, felt Iran had “given up too much” with the JCPoA. He and other hardliners believed (and continue to believe) that the US could not be trusted. It took years of intensive negotiations before the Iranians agreed to, “the most intrusive international inspection regime that any sovereign state has willingly imposed on itself”.
Gordon and Malley note that:
“it is hard to imagine the Iranian leadership reopening negotiations with an administration it does not trust after a unilateral violation by the United States of the existing agreement that others still support.
and that:
“even harder imagining it agreeing to the terms the administration has laid out of zero nuclear enrichment, a ban on ballistic missile development, even more intrusive inspections, plus a dramatic change in its regional behavior.”
Therefore, even if Rouhani was interested in subjecting his country to Trump’s further demands, the attempt to do so could lead to his ultimate downfall at the hands of the hardliners.
A change in US policy to Iran by Obama, not the sanctions, led to the JCPoA
This crucial point was emphasised by Trita Parsi, of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), in 2014:
“That myth — promoted by officials in President Barack Obama’s administration as well as powerful lawmakers like Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) – is that crippling sanctions brought the Iranian regime to its knees, forcing it to rush to the negotiating table to beg for mercy.”
However, as the author of the “definitive account” of the JCPoA negotiations, – Losing an Enemy Obama, Iran, and the Triumph of Diplomacy, convincingly argued:
“Sanctions are neither the reason for the breakthrough, nor the impetus behind the government of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s openness to talks.”
People who claim US-led sanctions brought Iran to the ‘negotiating table’:
“ignore the fact that the team around Rouhani has had a long history of pursuing a more conciliatory policy towards the West, including on the nuclear issue.”
Far from bringing Iran to the ‘negotiating table’, US sanctions compelled Iran to accelerate their nuclear enrichment; pushing them “closer and closer to having a nuclear weapon”.
Listen to Trita Parsi explain the geopolitical environment that ultimately lead to the JCPOA
A “very dangerous escalation”, by the US
Just as Parsi warns against thinking that a return to sanctions will result in a “better deal”, so too do Gordon and Malley. They describe the “most troubling scenario” as being:
“If Iran delivers on its threat to leave the deal entirely, expand its nuclear program, or provoke a military clash, it would undoubtedly face global opprobrium and international isolation.”
Yet, Gordon, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and Malley, the president of the International Crisis Group, make it very clear who they hold responsible in the event of such an escalation.
“But were that to happen, we must not forget that this ruinous chain of events will have been deliberately set into motion by an administration intent on destabilizing Iran, no matter the consequences, no matter the dangers, and no matter the costs.”