What I Learned Last Week: First Things Third

Mehrnoosh Ayranpour

2 April 2021

By all accounts, the optimistic outlook for an immediate rapprochement between America and Iran in the earliest days of the Biden administration has been frustrated.

While America quickly re-entered nearly every major international accord that it had exited under the Trump administration, the JCPOA was considered apart. Hindsight may implicate a strategic calculus on the part of the White House to eschew preemptive commitments which would limit the scope of outcomes to ‘compliance for compliance’ and possibly otherwise dim prospects for a supplementary far-reaching deal between the United States and the Islamic Republic under the construct of ‘more for more’.

Or, perhaps, it was simply due to the optics of spending political capital to prioritize a fraught legal framework meant to address critical, if technical, geopolitical concerns (i.e., Iran’s nuclear capabilities), at a time when COVID relief and its correlative infrastructure bill, both cornerstones of the Build Back Better creed, would have perforce taken precedence.

But regardless, we have now arrived at an auspicious, if stilted juncture: on the symbolic 13th day of the Iranian New Year, which neatly coincides with Good Friday, it was announced to modest fanfare during a public holiday that next week, indirect talks would begin with Iran in the very city where the JCPOA was hammered out in the first place. 

Details have been scant; Iran’s foreign minister has emphasized that there is no need to communicate face to face with the Americans while acknowledging that European sponsored dialogue to address the rift between Washington and Tehran can serve a purpose.

For its part, the White House, via the commentary of both press secretary Jen Psaki and Department of State spokesman Ned Price, have asserted that the Biden administration is, for all intents and purposes, looking at the coming-together in Vienna as a first step and that from the perspective of the Americans, the door remains open for real dialogue.

These are all encouraging signs, backed by the providential significance of the date of their announcement, when Iranians the world over cast their Nowrouz greens out into the flowing waters, a metaphor for the renewal of life come spring.

Yet in that spirit of positivity, the real complications pertinent to a reactivation of America’s participation in the JCPOA may be acknowledged and considered.

The essence of the idea of ‘compliance for compliance’ is that America will commit to fulfilling once more the entirety of its obligations under the Nuclear Deal contingent upon a cessation of Iran’s strategic remedial measures. Those measures have meant a gradual reduction of adherence to stringent provisions concerning levels of uranium enrichment activity, the size of stockpiles, and the purity of nuclear material, among others. 

For Iran, it is critical that America demonstrate the functional implementation of those commitments. Simplistically, this can be thought to include, chiefly, the reopening of banking channels between the Islamic Republic and the global financial system and the unfettering of Iran’s hydrocarbons exports, though that is not a comprehensive list.

Nor is the mechanism by which those can be achieved straightforward. Iran’s economic woes and trade isolation are a consequence of myriad layers of sanctions placed upon the country by America over decades: many such strictures predated the JCPOA, some remained in place even during the monumental sanctions relief provided for under the Nuclear Deal, and moreover, there were many more sanctions, both upon legal and natural persons, put into place by the Trump administration.

In terms of functional process and scope, legacy pre-JCPOA sanctions would not seem to be on the table, but more troublingly, it may also prove difficult to conceive of an immediate route by which post-JCPOA Trump-era shackles, particularly the symbolic sanctions on certain high profile Iranian figures, can be rolled back.

Thus, ‘compliance for compliance’ may be a framework which is restricted to the contents of the JCPOA, and that limitation, however it may be rationalized by America,  could anger the Iranian contingent who may fail to see how trust can be re-established when the nation’s foreign minister and chief negotiator is himself sanctioned.

And while Iranians may balk at this facet of negotiations, there is also serious work to do in terms of their expectation that proof of functional commitment to the JCPOA be demonstrated by America. 

That is because, while re-establishing Iranian compliance is not all too difficult since it concerns quantifiable obligations centered on nuclear thresholds, establishing American adherence cannot, at least from Iran’s point of view, merely be an obligation of means. It will not be enough to lift sanctions if practical tools are not provided to financial institutions that will allow them to restart financial transmission with Iran. Continued non-compliance by Iran with the Financial Action Task Force ("FATF") mandates will not help either.

Not unreasonably, Tehran will wish to see that their hard-won right to send and receive value through global financial institutions is respected in practice. But how can American guarantee this?

Olive branches have already been extended in terms of the United States’ granting of permissions to access certain blocked funds destined for COVID relief purposes, but that has thus far been limited to Iranian money held in only a few jurisdictions and represents only a small portion of the many billions that Iran expects to be freed.

Technical wrangling over unwinding sanctions and ensuring untrammeled financial flows are not, however, impossible. These may be thought of as challenges of the sort which can be addressed by the spirit of “if there is a will, there is a way”.  Yet that will must also be weighed against the fervent opposition that exists in some corners to any putative reconciliation between these countries, both domestic and foreign.

Hence, the Good Friday announcement of the start of indirect talks is to be viewed as positive. But the very idea of ‘indirect talks’ is awkward: it conjures images of Viennese couriers and attachés shuttling messages between Iranian and American diplomats, who might anyway bump into each other staring at Klimts in the Belvedere.  And so it would not be uncharitable to contend that precious time has been lost in getting started with what was assuredly destined to be a thorny diplomatic process. However, in spite of the delayed sequencing, it is nonetheless reassuring for Iran watchers to see that an ostensible first priority of the Biden administration has still managed to come in third.