The Clause That Could Scupper The Iran Nuclear Accord

By approving a missile attack on an Iranian-backed Shi’ite militia base in Syria on Feb. 25, Biden sought to reassure his partners that, unlike former President Donald Trump, he would stand by the U.S. commitment to their defense. The strike was in response to Iranian-backed militia attacks on U.S. targets in Iraq, as well as the firing of projectiles against Saudi Arabia reportedly from Iraqi territory.

The attack also served notice to Iran that it is dealing with a new administration that is more committed to its international commitments and multilateralism—and that while it wants to revive the nuclear agreement, it will not do so at any price.

The administration reinforced its message by asking other countries to support a formal censure of Iran over its accelerating nuclear activities at the meeting in Vienna of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) board of governors. The United States wants the IAEA to take Iran to task for stepping up production of nuclear fuel in violation of the nuclear accord and stalling the agency’s inquiries into the presence of uranium particles at undeclared sites.

While risking a perilous military tit-for-tat with Iran, the moves by America are likely to reinforce Iranian domestic and economic pressure to seek an immediate and unconditional U.S. return to the accord and lifting of sanctions. This would be partly in anticipation of the 2023 milestone.

Pressure on the Iranian government to secure immediate tangible results is compounded by a public that is clamoring for economic and public-health relief, and largely blames government mismanagement and corruption, rather than harsh U.S. sanctions, for the country’s economic misery and inability to get the pandemic under control.

The sanctions were imposed after Trump withdrew from the nuclear accord in 2018.

The pressure is further bolstered by the fact that recent polls show that the Iranian public, like the government, has little faith that the United States will live up to its commitments under a potentially revived nuclear deal. The results suggest that neither the government in Tehran nor the Iranian public would have confidence in a process that produces only a partial lifting of sanctions. They also indicated a drop in support for the deal from more than 75 percent in 2015 to about 50 percent today.

Two-thirds of those polled opposed negotiating restrictions on Iran’s ballistic-missile program and support for regional proxies, even if submitting to such restrictions would lead to a lifting of all sanctions.