Ebrahim Noroozi/AP Photo
The Iranian presidential election is scheduled to take place in May or June of 2021, giving a potential Biden administration only a few months with Rouhani as his counterpart in Tehran.
Ever since Donald Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal, critics have debated how a future administration could salvage the agreement. Ideas include simply rejoining the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as it’s technically called, or using leverage provided by the sanctions reimposed by the Trump administration to extract more favorable terms from Iran. Others suggest freezing sanctions where they currently are while encouraging Iran to halt nuclear capabilities at the current levels, as an interim step before reaching a new, broader deal. Notably absent from all of these debates is an essential question: What if Iran isn’t interested in reviving the deal?
The JCPOA offered Iran partial relief from economic sanctions that the international community had instituted since 2006, in exchange for restricting Iran’s nuclear program. A variety of factors allowed Iran and the United States, China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and Germany to reach the agreement, but among them, certainly, was the willingness of the Iranian leadership to make the necessary compromises. By rejoining the deal, the United States could be reassured about Iran’s nuclear program, while Iran would gain some level of economic relief at a time of immense hardship. However, some of the conditions that shaped Iran’s thinking have changed in the intervening years, and many of them suggest that the Islamic Republic will be more wary of entering a deal with the United States now than it was five years ago. These considerations may constrain the Islamic Republic’s ability to rejoin, and the opportunity a Biden victory would potentially present may come too late.
For one, the political affiliation of the Iranian government is changing. After February’s legislative elections, the Iranian Principlist alliance now holds 221 seats, up from 83, while the opposition reformist coalition lost 101 of their 121 seats in the Assembly. The second round of the elections, which will elect 11 more seats, will be held in September 2020.
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Historically, legislative elections have been strong indicators of presidential results in Iran, so low turnout (as there was in February) typically favors more conservative parties. Additionally, a majority of the candidates who backed incumbent President Hassan Rouhani, whose administration negotiated the JCPOA, were barred from running in the legislative election. Because of this, it appears that the more pragmatic camp will lose the presidency next year. Since Principlists, the more conservative party who are typically less inclined toward diplomacy, have been highly critical of the nuclear accord, this may endanger its future prospects. The Iranian presidential election is scheduled to take place in May or June of 2021, giving a potential Biden administration only a few months with Rouhani as his counterpart in Tehran—a time during which Rouhani could in theory prove that engagement with the U.S. works. If the incoming Democratic administration does not prioritize rejoining the JCPOA within that short time frame, warned journalist Negar Mortazavi at a Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft event earlier this month, “Biden is going to lose that chance for the rest of his presidency.”
There are other reasons why Iran may not be eager to revive the nuclear deal. When the JCPOA was first negotiated, the government promised the Iranian people that they would feel the economic benefits that would come from the easing of sanctions. With the exception of a few industries, such as manufacturing, this was not the case even prior to Trump’s inauguration. According to Arang Keshavarzian, associate professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University, because many Iranians now doubt the benefits of sanctions relief, it will be difficult to sell the deal a second time.
Americans’ focus has been entirely centered around American interests—whether, how, and when the U.S. can rejoin the deal.
In 2015, there was upward pressure from the Iranian people for the government to find a way to integrate the Islamic Republic into the international economy. But the JCPOA represented a letdown. And since it didn’t lead to an opening up, the pressure on the government is now less intense. Popular support for the nuclear deal, per a recent poll, has plunged from over three-quarters in August 2015—one month after the accord was signed—to well under half last fall.
Iran’s leadership may also have lost trust in an American government whose word proved fickle when Trump left the nuclear deal in 2018 despite Iran having remained in compliance up to that point. As a result, Iran might seek compensation or further concessions before returning to compliance with the accord.
Finally, just as the United States must confront the coronavirus, the subsequent economic crisis, and recent protests against police brutality as its presidential election nears, Iranians will vote against a backdrop of the pandemic—Iran was one of the early epicenters of the virus, intensifying its economic crisis, and is currently going through a second wave—anti-regime demonstrations that are unparalleled in the country’s modern history, and uncertainty about who will succeed an aging Supreme Leader. As Keshavarzian says, “There’s so much going on in Iranian domestic politics that the U.S. component is quite peripheral.”
There are countervailing considerations. The Trump administration’s decision to reinstate the secondary sanctions which penalized countries or other entities from engaging in business with Iran, combined with the global economic downturn caused by the COVID-19 crisis, has hurt the Iranian economy. Iran’s oil exports have gone from a high of 2.3 million barrels per day (bpd) in early 2018 to 287,000 bpd in March of this year to 70,000 bpd in April, at a time when the price of oil, due to oversupply and a lack of demand, partially fueled by the coronavirus, has been plummeting. Rejoining the deal could offer some economic relief, as the United States would no longer sanction countries for importing Iran’s oil.
Iran has thus far responded cautiously to the United States’ withdrawal, indicating to some that they are keeping the door open to improving relations with the United States if the opportunity presents itself. Jarrett Blanc, a former State Department official who was responsible for the implementation of the JCPOA, says that the Iranians would probably want to rejoin the deal as is. He notes that Iran has not yet carried out any of the actions—withdrawing from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) or violating its JCPOA commitments in irreversible ways—that could seriously jeopardize the future of the deal.
Even the likelihood of an incoming conservative government doesn’t necessarily mean a fundamental change in Iran’s stance on this question. John Ghazvinian, who directs the Middle East Center at the University of Pennsylvania, told me, “I think there’s a very serious misunderstanding in the mainstream American political narrative about why the JCPOA was successfully negotiated … It is not because Iran elected a more moderate, flexible president, Rouhani, in 2013,” before going on to explain that presidents from both sides of Iran’s political aisle have had remarkably similar positions on the nuclear issue since the early 2000s.
If the next Iranian government, regardless of political ideology, maintains this stance, the Iran deal can still be rescued. But Americans’ focus has been entirely centered around American interests—whether, how, and when the U.S. can rejoin the deal. It would be a mistake to assume that Iran doesn’t have a say in the deal’s future as well.
