What’s the Deal with Iran?

Five U.S. citizens unjustly jailed by Iran will be free within weeks. Soon after, there may be an agreement to partially roll back Iran’s nuclear program. What explains this burst of diplomacy?

Sometime in the next few weeks, perhaps this month, the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran will finalize arrangements that will free five U.S. citizens unjustly imprisoned by Iran, some for years. These men have already been released from prison and have been moved to a hotel in Teheran. Soon, you will see joyous video of their flights to freedom and return to U.S. soil.

In exchange for their liberty, the U.S. will release several Iranian citizens jailed for sanctions violations. As part of the deal, South Korea (with U.S. approval) will allow Iran to access some $6 billion of Iranian funds frozen in South Korean banks. Iran will be allowed to use the funds only to buy medicines and other humanitarian goods.

This seems a win-win. Not only are innocent Americans freed, but the deal will alleviate some of the suffering inflicted on innocent Iranians by U.S. sanctions that make it very difficult for them to buy vital medicines and other goods.

Photo by Ehsan Habashi on Unsplash

But hard-line opponents of Iran don’t like anything about this diplomatic victory.

First, because it’s been negotiated by a Democratic president they despise. They don’t want Joe Biden to get credit for anything, even if he is just doing the same thing they praised Donald Trump for doing when he was president. This is just straight up politics. Party over country.

The second reason is more strategic. For many, the only solution for the Iran is regime change. They seek the complete overthrow of the clerical government. Thus, they oppose any deal that seems to legitimize the regime, or make it appear reasonable, or reduces tensions between Iran and its neighbors and adversaries. Their preferred approach is economic strangulation and military attack.

Some, like the former Shah of Iran’s son, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, have a direct interest in overthrowing the regime. He hopes to restore the monarchy and rule as his father and grandfather once did.

Others, like Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, use the threat of Iran to distract from the Israeli occupation and brutalization of the Palestinians (and, increasingly, from his attempt to end democracy in Israel). Anything that reduces tensions also reduces his leverage.

It is true, of course, that this deal will help Iran. Even if Iran can’t use any of the $6 billion to buy arms, money is fungible and it possibly could free up funds that could be used against U.S. interests. The deal will also slightly reduce Iran’s pariah status.

But that’s why Iran is making the deal. No one makes an agreement that only favors the other side unless they have no choice. Iran get something out of this deal; so does the U.S.; so does the region.

But wait, there’s more. We now know that the U.S. and Iran are also engaged in quiet talks to restrain Iran’s nuclear program. Specifically, it appears that Iran will agree to slow its rate of uranium enrichment (the processing of uranium for fuel that could quickly be turned into the processing of uranium for the cores of bombs). In exchange, the United States will reduce some of its sanctions on Iran.

This “less for less” deal would not be a return to the robust restrictions Iran agreed to under the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) negotiated by President Barack Obama. Donald Trump foolishly pulled out of that accord in 2018, promising a “better deal.” Instead, Iran now has large stores of low- and medium-enriched uranium that it could turn into bomb cores in a matter of days. Under the JCPOA this would have taken at least a year, with an additional two years to build a working nuclear device.

I plan to detail the state of the Iranian nuclear program and how it may be restrained in a post later this month. For the remainder of this article, though, I would like to quote my colleague, Carnegie Endowment scholar Aaron David Miller on why we should make any deal at all with Iran. He wrote a brilliant piece for Foreign Policy in August that you may have missed. He makes the case far better than I can.

Here’s the bottom line, he says:

For a U.S. administration with a plate full of headaches—from Ukraine and Russia to China—and a presidential reelection campaign to run, trying to preempt a serious crisis over Iran’s nuclear program is the smart and responsible play. The last thing the Biden administration needs is a Middle East crisis over an uncontrolled Iranian nuclear program that’s enriching uranium at weapons-grade levels.

This is an evil regime, Miller says. Of course we want to see its actions in the region curtailed, its oppression of its own people ended and the regime itself gone. But there is no magic solution, whatever some foreign policy hucksters claim.

To put it simply, the United States has a strategic problem with Iran but lacks a strategic solution. All of Washington’s efforts—from the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement to the latest effort at de-escalation through a set of understandings—are transactional, not transformational; interim, not final; and compartmentalized, not comprehensive. And all diplomatic efforts are constrained by U.S. and Iranian domestic politics, which severely define the limits of what’s possible.

Iran is now a nuclear weapons threshold state, he correctly states. That is, it has the ability (the material, the knowledge and the technical capability) to make a nuclear bomb fairly quickly, almost certainly within two years.

The only way to guarantee that Iran never acquires nuclear weapons would be a change in the regime to one that has no need or desire to acquire these weapons, is much less adversarial to the West, and is more integrated into the region and not focused on spreading its revolutionary ideology abroad. Frankly, that’s hard to imagine anytime soon, or perhaps at all. The most likely successor to the current regime, dominated by a supreme leader, would be an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)-controlled government that might be much more risk-ready when it comes to weaponizing. And in any event, it’s beyond Washington’s capacity to determine who governs Iran. That should rightly remain in the hands of the Iranian people.

Short of a change in regime, all available options including diplomacy and economic and political pressure produce only temporary fixes. Even the use of military force might at best delay Iran’s program—and according to Tamir Hayman, the former head of Israeli military intelligence, force could even accelerate Iran’s desire for a bomb.

All of the “maximum pressure” tactics of the Trump administration, including the assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, have not reduced the threat . Nor have the Israeli attacks on Iran and Iranian forces, including assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists, sabotage of nuclear facilities and bombing of Iranian military positions in Syria. Iran has only grown stronger; its nuclear program advanced further.

Thus, the Biden administration has to choose from a list of “bad options,” says Miller.

With almost no chance of returning to the 100-plus-page JCPOA and no desire to court the possibility that Iran’s unrestrained uranium enrichment might result in an Israeli military strike potentially involving the United States, the administration has been negotiating indirectly with Iran on a series of understandings to deescalate tensions.

On the Iranian side, the understandings reported in the press include capping enrichment at 60 percent, ending proxy attacks on U.S. forces in Syria, and not transferring ballistic missiles to Russia. On the U.S. side (presumably with the Europeans in tow), they include not tightening sanctions, not seizing oil bearing tankers, and not seeking punitive resolutions against Iran at the United Nations or International Atomic Energy Agency.

Neither the United States nor Iran seek a formal written accord with Iran.

Rather, it is seeking what appears to be a series of mutually agreed but unwritten understandings to be implemented unilaterally, perhaps with some degree of coordination. Some of these are apparently already being implemented: The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Iran has “significantly slowed the pace at which it is accumulating near-weapons-grade enriched uranium and has diluted some of its stockpile.”

The exact agreement isn’t known yet, or even agreed upon.

But whatever their terms, even informal understandings are going to be received in Congress and in Israel with a range of reactions from skepticism to open hostility. Not one to miss a beat when it comes to Iran, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blasted the agreement as providing money to terror groups under Iran’s auspices.

U.S. House Foreign Affairs Chair Michael McCaul sent a letter to President Joe Biden on June 15 urging the administration to remember that, in McCaul’s reading, U.S. law requires any agreement, understanding, or arrangement, “even informal,” with Iran to be submitted to Congress and that “any continued obstruction will rob the American people, and in particular Gold Star families whose loved ones were killed by Iran-backed terrorism, of answers about why the United States is facilitating the lining of Iran’s coffers.” Sen. Lindsay Graham said it was “insane” to put billions of dollars on the table.

So what’s the benefit? It reduces the risk, concludes Miller.

If you believe that Iran and Israel will go to considerable lengths to avoid an escalation that might lead to a serious confrontation, then you might conclude that no understandings, written or otherwise, are necessary and that there’s no advantage to making any deals with Iran.

If, alternatively, you were sitting in Washington with a full foreign-policy agenda, trying to avoid potential entanglements and distractions from the challenges you’re already struggling to manage, you’d probably see things differently. You would want to work proactively to keep as many issues as possible off your plate, especially ones that could, without much imagination, easily produce a Middle East conflict involving U.S. military action.

It is well worth reading Miller’s whole article to get his complete reasoning. I hope that I have done him justice here. As these events unfold in the coming weeks, keep in mind his sound, serious conclusion:

Biden’s approach to Iran isn’t bold or pretty. It can’t begin to strategically address the United States’ Iran problem; it has downsides; and it’s going to bring on a good deal of heat from Republicans. But in the cruel and unforgiving world of dealing with Iran, where options run from bad to worse, it’s hard to imagine coming up with a better alternative.