Given a new wave of bipartisan hesitancy, the Biden administration has changed its tone on the Iran deal negotiations.
Given a new wave of bipartisan hesitancy, the Biden administration has changed its tone on these negotiations.
F or those following the Iran nuclear talks in Vienna, the Biden administration’s negotiations have been a feat of concession and weakness. The deal on the table, which is being packaged as a return to the (also weak) 2015 JCPOA, is actually much weaker; it gives Iran a legitimate, quicker path to a nuclear weapon and frees up billions in sanctions relief. Until quite recently, this shameful capitulation of a deal has evaded the scathing headlines it deserves. But now, as the most shocking details come to light, the Biden administration will have to answer for its strategic failure and suffer the political consequences should the deal go through.
After a year of negotiations, the details of the agreement are mostly finalized and a deal could be imminent based on Iran’s recent release of hostages. The final snag is the question over the IRGC’s terrorist designation. On Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the “effort to revive the 2015 nuclear deal agreement now hinges on perhaps the most politically sensitive issue in the negotiations: whether to remove the U.S. terrorism designation for Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards.” The Journal reports that this contentious question could “cause a breakdown in negotiations,” according to senior U.S. officials.
News of the IRGC designation broke on March 4 when Gabriel Noronha, a former State Department official, reported that the Biden administration was considering lifting sanctions on the Office of the Supreme leader and removing the IRGC’s foreign terrorist organization (FTO) label. The Biden administration put these offers on the table as early as spring 2021. The Journal reported that, “according to people close to the talks, the U.S. team dangled the possibility of lifting the Guard’s terrorism designation last spring with the approval of some in Washington.”
Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told National Review that Persian outlets reported the lifting of the IRGC’s FTO label and the end of sanctions on the Office of the Supreme Leader under Executive Order 13876 (which punished the sponsorship of terrorism) in summer 2021. “If reports are to be believed about how early the Biden administration sought such a promissory note, then it would be yet another strike against its Iran policy,” said Taleblu.
But, until recently, the Biden administration has been willing to suffer strategic sacrifice in the interest of claiming the political “victory” of returning to the JCPOA.
The strategic consequences for Biden’s potential capitulation would be far-reaching. Aside from empowering Iran with billions in sanctions relief that will flow to terroristic proxies, the impending deal is already alienating key partners and allies. As I wrote on Monday, Israel has come out against the deal while Saudi Arabia and the UAE — both frequent targets of Iran-backed attacks by Houthi rebels — have waved off Biden’s requests for more oil as the price at American pumps skyrockets.
Biden’s weakness is driving Middle Eastern partners into the hands of our adversaries. Taleblu shared that Washington’s approach to Iran has consequences “particularly for nations that live on the front lines.” Consequences include China’s growing economic and security relationship with the Gulf States and the UAE’s budding relationship with Syrian dictator, Bashar al-Assad.
The Biden administration continued to push the deal, insisting that preventing a nuclear Iran should be the top priority before anything else. Ned Price, spokesperson for the State Department, and Wendy Sherman, the U.S. deputy secretary of state, have both claimed that Iran would have more power to cause regional instability with a nuclear weapon. This is a miscalculation; Iran’s nuclear program is but a facet of its regional ambitions. Spreading its Axis of Resistance throughout the Middle East by means of proxy forces is Iran’s main goal. The nuclear program is another point of leverage in its bid to be a regional power.
The sum of these consequences is a grave weakening of the U.S. deterrent and American credibility. In his recent op-ed on the Iran deal, Bret Stephens wrote that America’s biggest strategic challenge is a “perception, shared by friends and foes alike, that we are weak.”
Stephens reasons that if the Biden administration goes through with the Iran deal, it will negate every sign of strength it has shown supporting Ukraine and cause irreparable damage to U.S. geopolitical leadership. He characterizes the current perception of the U.S. as “diffident, distracted and divided.” The Iran deal would be the nail in the coffin; Biden’s power projection has been wholly inconsistent.
For instance, while Biden talks tough on Russia in regard to Ukraine, he’s allowed the Kremlin to be a main negotiator in the proceedings and to undertake a massive role in overseeing Iranian uranium and enrichment facilities. The Biden administration is still toying with the IRGC concession after the IRGC themselves claimed responsibility for a ballistic-missile strike on Erbil, next to a U.S. consulate base.
While the outcome of Biden’s negotiations was always going to be strategically detrimental, it’s beginning to be a political loss as well. As a result, the administration has resorted to more uncertain tone regarding negotiations.
Republicans, of course, have vocally opposed the deal, just as they did with Obama’s 2015 JCPOA. John Bolton slammed the deal yesterday in the Washington Post. He, like many Republicans, demanded that the Biden administration submit any deal as a treaty for Senate approval as opposed to an executive order.
Republicans are predictably enraged by any delisting of the IRGC. Senator Jim Risch (R., Idaho), the leading Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, said yesterday that he’s “appalled at the concessions,” explaining that a “deal that provides $90-$130 billion in sanctions relief, relieves sanctions against Iran’s worst terror and human rights offenders, and delists the [Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps] does not support our national-security interests.”
But Biden’s main political trouble lies with the Democrats, who have been relatively silent until the IRGC designation came to light. After a closed-door briefing on Tuesday about Iran’s shrinking breakout time, Senator Ben Cardin (D., Md.) said he “certainly would very much like to maintain that [the IRGC] are a terrorist organization, because they are a terrorist organization . . . that designation should remain.”
Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Bob Menendez (D., N.J.) has expressed hesitancy as well. Last Thursday, he told The Hill that he doesn’t have enough details to take a stance, but expressed that it “would be a problem” if the deal “somehow gives relief to Iran and if somehow Russia gets any benefit from it” (both of which would occur).
Given this new wave of bipartisan hesitancy, the Biden administration has markedly changed its tone regarding the deal. Last week, when asked about the state of negotiations after the ballistic missile strike in Erbil, national-security adviser Jake Sullivan did not take a nuclear deal off the table: “The only thing more dangerous than Iran armed with ballistic missiles and advanced military capabilities is an Iran that has all of those things and a nuclear weapon.” Yesterday in a press briefing, he sounded less certain:
We believe that if there is an Iran nuclear deal that meets the standards the President has set to verifiably block the pathway of Iran to get to a nuclear weapon and put this program back in the box after President Trump let it out of the box when he left the deal back in 2018, we will do that deal because we believe it is in the American national security interest to do so. But we will not do that deal until it meets those objectives.
Ned Price also switched up his tone. On March 16, after a stall in negotiations, Price was asked about remaining issues, saying they “want guarantees from the U.S. . . . against another policy change, and they want the IRGC to be cleared of being named a terrorist group.” Price said, “We do think the remaining issues can be bridged.”
On Monday, he was no longer trying to sell the deal: “I want to be clear that an agreement is neither imminent nor is it certain.” He said the U.S. is “preparing equally for scenarios with and without a mutual return to full implementation of the JCPOA.”