Drones, Protests, JCPOA, Israel: US Faces ‘Complex’ Iran
Ned Price, US foreign affairs spokesman, has called Iran “one of the most complex challenges we face” and reiterated the 2015 nuclear deal is off the US agenda.
Ned Price, US foreign affairs spokesman, has called Iran “one of the most complex challenges we face” and reiterated the 2015 nuclear deal is off the US agenda.
Speaking to the press Wednesday, Price, the State Department spokesman, said the United States had “no reason to put any stock or faith into the statements” made recently by Iranian officials that they were keen to resume talks over reviving the 2015 agreement, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action).
“There was a deal to mutually return to the JCPOA that was on the table that was approved by all parties” in September, Price said. “That ultimately went nowhere only because the Iranians weren’t prepared to accept it…The JCPOA hasn’t been on the agenda for some months now.
“There is no denying that Iran presents one of the most complex challenges we face… Its nuclear program has been the focus of successive administrations. Its malign activities throughout the Middle East and in some cases potentially even beyond has been the focus of successive administrations…And now what it is doing to its own people – the repression……[and] the security assistance that it’s providing to Russia – all of these…. represent…one of the most difficult challenges we face.”
While failure to agree JCPOA restoration in either year-long multilateral talks in Vienna or subsequent bilateral US-Iran contacts reflected gaps between Iran and the US over JCPOA restoration, Price’s reference to complexities reflects new complications.
‘On the agenda, but not on the table’
Firstly, Iran’s supply of military drones to Russia has shifted the approach of the three European JCPOA signatories, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. While the European Union foreign policy chief Joseph Borrell has continued diplomatic efforts with Iran, meeting Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian in Amman in December, European officials have intimated that Iran’s involvement with Russia precludes JCPOA revival.
Europe long held to the JCPOA logic of separating Iran’s nuclear program from other issues, but it has agreed with the US that the drones supply – even if, as Iran says, before the February outbreak of the latest Ukraine hostilities – violates a JCPOA clause restricting Iran trading certain categories of arms.
European states have joined the US in levying new sanctions against Iran over both the drones and Tehran’s response to recent unrest. Hossein Mousavian, former Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister and nuclear negotiator, told Al-Monitor this meant the JCPOA was now “on the agenda but not on the table.”
Mousavian said the “Europeans are playing a more active role to create an international consensus against Iran, more because of the Ukraine issue…[and] compared to the US…[had] become ‘more Catholic than the Pope’ in advancing hostile policies against Iran.”
A second complication is the return to office in Israel of Benjamin Netanyahu with a coalition including ultra-Zionists, which has created a new challenge for Washington. While Netanyahu, who has for decades portrayed Iran as on the threshold of a nuclear weapon, is playing up his warm relationship with President Joe Biden, there are clear US nerves.
‘Security and stability’
A Pentagon read-out of the first telephone call, late Wednesday, between US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and new Israeli counterpart Yoav Gallant featured Austin warning Israel not to “undermine security and stability in the West Bank,” a reference to speeding up Jewish settlements in occupied Palestinian land.
The US read-out referred to agreement “on the need to work together to address…regional challenges, including threats posed by Iran’s destabilizing activities,” while the Israeli defense department statement said Gallant had “emphasized in the conversation Israel’s commitment to do whatever it takes to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons...”
Something similar happened with Monday’s call between Antony Blinken, US Secretary of State, and Eli Cohen, the Israeli foreign minister. A right-wing Israeli newspaper cited sources that Blinken had proclaimed the JCPOA dead. The US read-out of the call made no mention of this, and a US official subsequently denied it.
Security analysts have also discussed whether growing US-Israel military co-operation, highlighted this week by joint air drills, makes an attack on Iran more likely or is rather a means to rein in a Netanyahu-led Israel.
The former head of parliament’s (Majles) foreign relations and national security committee Heshmatolah Falahatpisheh told Nameh News in Tehran January 3 that "The United States will return to the JCPOA, but first, Iran needs to do four things: Settling domestic differences and reducing tensions, bringing about relative stability to the country's economy, making those who prevented the revival of the deal during the past two years accountable, and sending a new team to continue the negotiations."
Since negotiations to revive the 2015 nuclear deal or JCPOA broke down in September, the Biden administration and its European allies have put the talks on the backburner and even President Joe Biden said in early November that “JCPOA is dead.”
According to Nameh News, Falahatpisheh is one of those politicians who believe diplomacy should be given yet another chance before pronouncing the JCPOA dead. Falahatpisheh reiterated that Europe and the US will certainly return to negotiations in 2023 and Iran should welcome this.
Falahatpisheh said whatever that has been done so far to save the JCPOA were tactical moves rather than strategic changes, adding that both the United States and Europe are trying to weaken Iran's bargaining power.
Referring to the ongoing uprising in Iran, Falahatpisheh said, the United States and Europe assume that the protests have weakened Iran's bargaining power. That is why they pretend that they do not need to continue negotiations. On the other hand, the positions of anti-JCPOA political figures in Iran contribute to the Western apathy for more talks.
"Under the current situation, it is better for those who always opposed the JCPOA to stop further weakening Iran's diplomacy by commenting on the issue," Falahatpisheh said. He added that "Iran should change its nuclear negotiators and get rid of those who go to the negotiations to disrupt previous agreements rather than reaching a deal."
Falahatpisheh’s was clearly referring to Ali Bagheri-Kani, the chief Iranian negotiator, who is a protégé of Saeed Jalili, a hardliner anti-West ideologue.
In another development, Jalili, one of the staunch opponents of an agreement with the United States, has accused former President Hassan Rouhani of “tying Iran economic development to the JCPOA” and contributing to the current crisis. Jalili and other hardliners know that they being blames for the continuation of US sanctions by preventing a nuclear deal and are twisting facts to blame others.
Jalili, who is Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's representative to Iran's Supreme National Security Council, further charged that "the enemy started instigating major protests in Iran and began to make Iran insecure after it found out that its immense pressure on the country's economy will not work." He called the JCPOA "an imaginary" achievement for the previous government.
Meanwhile, hardline lawmaker Ahmad Rastineh advised Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi to "escape the trap of the JCPOA," and called the 2015 nuclear deal "A deceit by the United States."
Repeating a fallacy Iranian ultraconservatives have been trumpeting about the US allegedly sanctioning the export of medicines to Iran, Rastineh said: "When they sanction medicine sales to Iran, how can we expect them to recognize the rights of this oppressed nation." The lawmaker's comment is contrary to Iranian officials' statements denying US sanctions on medicine.
Rastineh charged, "every time US officials talk about starting or stopping the negotiations, in fact, they wish to disrupt Iran's economy and hurt its currency."
In fact, economists and even many regime insiders say that in the absence of an agreement with the West people are sending tens of billions of dollars abroad and no one is investing in the economy.
Joint drills of Israeli F-35 jets and six US F-15 jets were based out of the Nevatim air base, where Israeli squadron commanders briefed Jerusalem Post military correspondent Jonah Jeremy Bob on training “for hitting targets in ‘deep’ enemy territory.” Bob wrote that the terminology was “often a euphemism for Iran and other countries who do not have immediate borders with Israel” and therefore should be seen a “signal to Iran.”
The return to power of Benjamin Netanyahu, heading a right-wing and pro-Jewish settler coalition, has fed speculation of an Israeli military attack on Iran. While outgoing prime minister Yair Lapid left office claiming Israel was better capable of striking Iran than ever, outgoing defense minister Benny Gantz told graduating air-force personnel late December they should be ready within “two to three years.”
Implying greater urgency, the Jerusalem Post’s report quoted a commander involved in Wednesday’s air drills that Israel’s three squadrons of US-supplied F-35s, even with some planes grounded for technical reasons, were “plenty, along with other Israeli fighter aircraft, to accomplish any mission that would need to be assigned.”
Netanyahu, whose warnings of an imminent Iranian nuclear bomb go back to the 1990s, is keen to stymie efforts by world powers to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action). The Likud leader strongly backed President Donald Trump pulling the US from the JCPOA and imposing ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions impeding Iran’s access to international markets.
But Netanyahu and his ministers now stress their closeness to the administration of President Joe Biden, which took office pledged to restoring the JCPOA but has been unable to agree terms with Tehran. Netanyahu’s call this week to win ‘global opinion’ against Iran suggests he thinks he can shift Biden in the direction he wants.
According to Israel Hayom, the Israeli newspaper owned by the Adelson family, Antony Blinken, the US Secretary of State, told Eli Cohen, Israel’s foreign minister, by phone January 2 that the JCPOA was finished. But the State Department read-out of the call referred only generally to a “threat from Iran,” did not mention the JCPOA, and stated Blinken had “emphasized the continued US commitment to a two-state solution [for Israel-Palestine] and opposition to policies that endanger its viability.”
US concerns over the likelihood of the Netanyahu government speeding up Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank are not just that demographic changes under what rule human rights groups have called ‘apartheid,’ doom the ‘two-state solution’ that Washington still formally backs. The recent World Cup in Qatar highlighted popular Arab support for Palestinian rights.
Netanyahu has also said he wants to extend Israel’s Trump-brokered ‘normalization’ agreements with some Arab states, stressing an Iranian threat. But even the United Arab Emirates, which signed a ‘normalization’ agreement with Israel 2020 and has perhaps little to fear from public opinion, stressed at the time its support for a Palestinian state.
‘Keep your friends closer’
There is also nuance in the US-Israel military relationship. Washington’s 2021 shift of Israel from its European Command (EUCOM0) to CENTCOM, its Middle Eastern command, has been followed by talk from leading US officials of closer military cooperation.
But some analysts pointed out this works in two ways, and may help the US rein Israel in. Newsweek magazine in December quoted a senior US intelligence official that Israel “was coming out of the closet, allowed now to openly associate with the [US] military while at the same time being denied access to another closet.” One third of Hebrew linguists in the US government “work in intelligence collection and analysis specifically related to spying on Israel,” including its nuclear arsenal, Newsweek reported.
“The more that Israel is a credible military opponent of Iran, the very reason for this shake-up, the more that they are also suspect for the very capabilities that we are helping to create and improve,” the official told Newsweek. “This is a case of ‘Keep your enemies close and your friends closer.’”