While President Donald Trump has asserted that the Iranian nuclear program has been “obliterated” in the wake of Israeli and U.S. strikes on Iran in June, Tehran’s nuclear capabilities can’t be wished or bombed away so easily. The U.S., Iran, and European powers are barreling toward a showdown over the “snapback” of six United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions on Iran that were suspended under the 2015 nuclear deal. While France, Germany, and the United Kingdom ultimately will decide whether or not to trigger the return of those resolutions, their decision may determine whether there is a window for a Trump deal with Iran or if the U.S. ends up back in the mix of another bloody Middle Eastern war.
On its face, the decision seems to be a lose-lose proposition.
If European powers don’t trigger snapback, they, along with the U.S., will likely lose the ability to restore far-reaching UNSC resolutions on Iran, which appears to be an outcome they are intent on avoiding. Those resolutions—while largely redundant given the far more powerful American sanctions—contain a number of significant provisions, including the untenable “zero-enrichment” ultimatum that dogged diplomatic efforts to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapon for years. Their restoration would provide international legitimacy for ongoing, dangerous efforts by Israel to remove diplomacy as a viable option and make another chapter of the Iran war inevitable. While the European powers have increasingly gone along with U.S. and Israeli pressure on Iran in recent years, their consideration of the snapback tool likely has more to do with ensuring their relevance in future debates than in steering fast-moving events toward their interests.
Yet triggering snapback is likely to be a disaster for nearly every party, save perhaps for hardliners in Tehran and Jerusalem who benefit from Western-Iranian tensions. The Islamic Republic has vowed to respond to the snapback of UN sanctions by withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). This is a position Tehran has held across multiple Iranian administrations and cannot be readily dismissed.
One can easily imagine how Iranian officials would be hard pressed to argue the merits of remaining in the NPT after snapback, given that they have been sanctioned six ways from Sunday and even bombed despite U.S. intelligence affirming that they did not have an active nuclear weapons program. By contrast, Iran can look at the undeclared regional nuclear power Israel, which recently finished bombing Iran with U.S. support, or North Korea, which exited the NPT before testing its own nuclear weapon a few years later, as better security models. Abiding by international law that is, at best, very unevenly applied increasingly looks like a sucker’s game if you are sitting in Tehran and were almost killed by an Israeli missile attack.
Rightly or wrongly, an Iranian exit from the NPT is a very likely outcome of snapback being triggered, and it would immediately cause a five-alarm fire in Washington. Pressure on Trump to strike Iran would once again be at a fever pitch, this time probably without the safety net of a pivot to a ceasefire. Trump would probably find himself once again back on the path to something he’s said he wants to avoid: another forever war in the Middle East.
Fortunately for Trump, he has a track record of looking at difficult choices and finding a third way. Here, aside from backing snapback or allowing it to lapse, there seems to be only one play available: push for an extension of snapback to better align with a realistic diplomatic timeline. If the Europeans in the coming weeks are able to extract concessions from Iran, which probably wants to avoid a return of the UNSC resolutions if it can do so while saving face, all the better. For example, perhaps Iran could make some initial moves toward restoring nuclear monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). But even if this isn’t possible, extending the snapback deadline is still likely to be the best option.
As it stands now, Iran’s nuclear program is at least partially under rubble and there is little understanding of how much is destroyed and what remains intact. IAEA monitoring was a predictable casualty of the strikes, and Iran’s leaders are betting that there will be more war—not that there will be a deal in the near-term—and are preparing accordingly. Under such circumstances, it is not realistic to expect that Iran will put its key leverage, in the form of a large stockpile of uranium enriched to near weapons grade, back under international monitoring—all to delay the return of sanctions that Iran weathered more than a decade ago. If the sanctions do return, Trump shouldn’t hold his breath hoping they succeed in forcing Iranian concessions—they might even prompt Tehran to dig in.
That’s why more time is needed. The U.S. and Europeans could agree to extend UNSC Resolution 2231 and its key snapback clause by another year, or longer. This would better sync up the possible leverage of snapback with a credible diplomatic process, which will likely take some time to emerge. Neither Europe nor the U.S. would lose the snapback tool, while Iran would receive a clear signal that the U.S. is not intent on going back to war immediately. That would create a more conducive environment to return to the negotiating table.
However, this is not a play that will come from the neoconservative-aligned elements of the Trump administration who thought the war, which the president wisely halted, should have continued. President Trump needs to be clear: He does not want another Iran nuclear crisis on his desk right now. Better to punt and put more time on the clock so that he can pursue a new deal when the time is right.
Read the full article here
