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Simply Returning to the JCPOA Would Be a Huge Mistake

(Australian Strategic Policy Institute) Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser - In 2016, an American official who helped negotiate the Iran nuclear deal told me that after 5-7 years, "the U.S. president at that time is going to have to reassess, and if it seems that our expectations that Iran would change its behavior do not come true, the president will have to leave the agreement. This is why we insisted on the snapback mechanism through which we can reimpose all the sanctions unilaterally." Five years have elapsed and Iran did not meet the Obama administration's expectations. Iran prefers a return to the JCPOA because it's the only safe path to having the capability to produce a large nuclear arsenal. The Biden administration claims that the maximum-pressure policy failed because Iran didn't succumb and instead escalated violations of the deal. The truth is the exact opposite. The pressure was so effective that Iran's main goal has been to rid itself of the sanctions. This pressure gives the U.S. a formidable starting point for negotiating a new and much better deal. What is the point of wasting this strong leverage by bringing Iran back into the JCPOA - which is where it wants to go anyhow - and only trying to negotiate a better deal once that leverage is gone? The writer, Director of the Project on Regional Middle East Developments at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, was formerly Director General of the Israel Ministry of Strategic Affairs and head of the Research Division of IDF Military Intelligence.
2021-04-29 00:00:00
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