Diplomatic Discourse with Chief Robert Opara
Mailbox: robertyejnc@gmail.com
Representatives of the world powers that signed a 2015 nuclear deal are in Vienna since Tuesday to save the landmark accord, but the path forward appears long and arduous. Iran and six world powers known as P5+1(China, France, Germany, Russia, United Kingdom and the United States) reached a historic nuclear deal on July 14th, 2015 that limited Iran’s nuclear programme and enhanced monitoring in exchange for relief from nuclear sanctions. Prior to this, Iran had been engaged in efforts to acquire the capability to build nuclear weapons for more than 2 decades.
Although it remains uncertain whether Tehran would have made the final decision to build nuclear weapons. It had developed a range of technologies, including uranium enrichment, war head designs and delivery systems that would give this option in relatively short time frame. In spite of the apprehensions of the international community in allowing Tehran that’s relatively short-fused in their usual serial altercation with Isreal whom they threatened to obliterate at some point over issues that bother on the Palestinians over the years, Tehran insists that it’s nuclear activities are entirely for peaceful purposes.
What, however follows is a chronological recount of the most significant development in Iran’s nuclear programme. International efforts to negotiate a workable settlement to address this lingering controversial issue and implementation of the agreement with Iran and P5+1 was signed on the 14th July, 2015. This contract hit a bump when Donald Trump got elected as the 45th President of the US on November 8th 2016. He had threatened to cancel the agreement on the campaign trail. He’d referred the nuclear pact as the worst agreement. He pledged to renegotiate it while in office. The US allies however resisted any efforts and plans for Trump to renegotiate it before he abysmally failed to win a second tenure.
The world’s community heaved a sigh of relief over the renewed efforts to restart the nuclear negotiation with erratic and bombastic Iran. In their estimation, you can’t handover a nuclear bomb to a temperate nation. That will be an untamed implosion on 4 legs. The ding dong eyeball to eyeball stare has actually come to an end with the resumption of this important meeting. The sound of death nail to this agreement was quite an implosion when Trump unilaterally pull the plugs in 2018. A year later, Iran started scaling back it’s commitment under the deal in response to the upscale pressure from the US maximum campaign despite opposition by other signatories to the nuclear agreement.
Trump’s scorched earth policy to destroy Iran didn’t help matters in this relationship. Trump unleashed, imposed, reimposed or relabelled some 1,600 sets of sanctions on Iran and inflicted a US1 trillion dollars worth of direct and indirect economic damage on Iran. In navigating through a renewed negotiation process, it’s quite unclear how these sanctions will be revoked or how many of the sanctions eventually maybe lifted for Iran for iran to make good on its promise of coming back to full compliance with the nuclear deals. Trump administration officials made it a strategic mission in 2020 to impose sanctions with new designations namely : terrorism and human rights abuses on already sanctioned individuals in an effort to make it more difficult for a potential Joe Biden administration to come back to the nuclear deal. Going forward however, Iran expects all sanctions under any labels, imposed by Trump to be lifted for the ease of further negotiations.
It appears officials in Tehran understand the conditions within US and the Joe Biden’s administration well. But at same time, that’s an issue that’s related to US, not Iran. This negotiation is expected to be tough, especially since there maybe stark contrasts between what different sides expect each other to do or restore. However, expectations must be strategically reconciled to save the world from an erratic Iran with nuclear war heads and probably supported by rogue nations including, perhaps China and Russia. For absolute peace to rain and avoid unnecessary nuclear proliferation, I expect all parties to the negotiations must have a clearer vision of what all sides need to do to return to their commitments JCPOA at the end if Vienna talks.
In other to make meaningful progress at the end of this whole iran’s nuclear deal, I believe that it will be fool hardy to think that the process will be favourably conclusive under a single session. There must be more than 1 session to make progress. But this first session must not fail. It is not hard to predict that there will be a mismatch between the Iranian expectations and what the US is willing to offer. But with smart pragmatic approach, both sides would be able to find a mutually acceptable way forward. The key factor here is how the restoration of the JCPOA is sequenced. But I guess that if Tehran goes in with a maximalist expectations, it would come off the meeting empty handed. I also don’t see Iran accepting a step by step plan to lift layers of American sanctions and expect the US to take final step of all sanctions imposed by Trump.
Why The Talks Now
The seeming exertion of energy to restart the nuclear talks was actually influenced by the fact that Iran and China signed a 25 years comprehensive cooporation agreement in late March after Foreign Minister Wang Yi travelled to Tehran. Nuclear experts believe this Iranian move has an impact in influencing the US mood for this meeting. For one, a 3 months agreement Iran reached with the INTERNATIONAL ATOMIC ENERGY AGENCY (IAEA) to temporarily keep the camera tapes off it’s surveillance of nuclear sites comes to an end in May. That averted a crises in late February as without it, the global nuclear watch-dog would face a significant gap in its monitoring of Iranian nuclear activities.
Moreover, the Iranian Presidential election in June is fast approaching. A likely promising Conservative or hardline president possibly with an audacious military background who may not be in favour of preserving the JCPOA as the relatively moderate outgoing president, Hassan Rouhani. Baring last minute change.of mind, I strongly believe that the Iranian President, Hassan Rouhani would wish to leave power and legacy of lifting these raft of draconian sanctions as an ex president. His administration is basically working hard to lift these sanctions as soon as possible.
