Cutting Through: Biden's Challenging Path Back to the JCPOA
December 17, 2020
When Barack Obama struck the Iran nuclear deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA) in 2015, he did so against some staunch opposition. The resistance came not only from Republicans but from many Democrats as well. Obama got enough support to avoid having to veto a congressional resolution opposing the deal. But four Democratic senators and 19 Democrats in the House of Representatives stood with Republicans in opposing him.
The Democrats who opposed Obama were not fringe members. They included Chuck Schumer, Ben Cardin, Bob Menendez, Brad Sherman, Nita Lowey, and Eliot Engel, among other prominent and powerful Democrats. It was only the fact that Obama brought the full weight of his office to bear—along with a broad, national coalition of diverse groups who worked hard to support the JCPOA, which I was proud to be a part of—that pushed enough Democrats to support the deal.
Joe Biden has vowed to re-enter the Iran nuclear deal, as it was when Donald Trump broke The U.S.’ commitment without provocation. Once the agreement is fully restored, he would then work to address other issues with Iran.
That’s the correct approach. But it’s easier said than done, and Biden will be facing a different playing field than he did when he was working for Obama. He’ll have some advantages Obama did not, but he will also face some daunting new challenges.
Obama had to deal with Republican control of both houses of Congress. Biden knows he will have a Democratic House and might have a 50-50 Senate, depending on how the twin runoffs in Georgia go on January 5. Even in the worst-case scenario, the Republicans will have 52 seats, two less than they controlled in 2015.
Biden can use the fact that many opponents of the JCPOA vocally opposed leaving the deal, on the basis that it would cripple the U.S.’ trustworthiness on the world stage and because even the Trump administration admitted Iran had not breached the terms of the agreement. He can also argue that the United States’ NATO allies were uniformly displeased by Trump’s action, and that Trump’s “maximum pressure” policy failed utterly, with Iran gradually ramping up its nuclear program again in response to the sanctions the U.S. unilaterally imposed.
All of that supports Biden’s case and makes it easier for him to re-enter the JCPOA. But those are not the only changes.
While Republicans remain united in their opposition to the JCPOA, several Democrats have already expressed misgivings about Biden re-entering the deal as it stands. Most prominent among these is Chris Coons, who is close to Biden, and who has already stated that he would not favor the U.S. re-entering the JCPOA without expanding the deal to cover other issues. As it was in 2015, that is a non-starter in Tehran, which is precisely why Obama kept the deal laser-focused on the nuclear issue.
But the greatest challenge to Biden’s ability to re-enter the JCPOA may be foreign, rather than domestic. I described elsewhere today the ways in which the experiences of the past four years have emboldened Israel and its embattled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. As hard as he will work to avoid even the slightest moderation of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and its siege on the Gaza Strip, he will work even harder to press for regime change in Iran. And, as I noted in the piece linked above, he is going to feel a lot bolder in doing so than he was five years ago. He has seen clearly that Democrats will do no more than talk at him. They will not act.
But Netanyahu is not the only one who has learned something in the past few years and who will surely test the mettle of the Biden administration from day one.
“I think we’ve seen, as a result of the after-effects of the JCPOA, that not involving the regional countries results in a build-up of mistrust and neglect of the issues of real concern and of real effect on regional security,” said Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan just two weeks ago.
He added that “The only way towards reaching an agreement that is sustainable is through such consultation.”
That’s a pretty confident statement from an official of a country that is currently seen in a very poor light in the United States. And it’s worth looking more deeply into it.
Prince Faisal’s reference to a sustainable agreement is notable. The JCPOA was, by every account, holding despite the United States’ failure to abide by its terms even before we broke our agreement. In 2019, I wrote that “…the problem of U.S. non-compliance didn’t start with Trump. After all, Barack Obama was unable to deliver on some of the promises of the JCPOA either. Although Obama did unfreeze significant Iranian assets, the hostile reaction of Congress to the JCPOA—which included a disturbing number of Democrats—in response to the campaigns of fear launched by myriad neoconservative, pro-Likud, and Republican groups chilled the atmosphere for U.S. businesses that had hoped to exploit a newly accessible Iranian market. And, although European companies were a bit bolder, even they became much more cautious due to American businesses’ timidity about investing in Iran.”
It's important to recall that one of the main commitments in the JCPOA was to encourage, and not discourage, investment in Iran, with the goal of both bringing the Islamic Republic’s economy back from the brink and to integrate it further into the regional and global community, which would create a track to move toward less confrontation and more diplomacy on a host of issues.
The U.S. was violating that commitment long before Trump came along, with one politician after another warning of U.S. actions against Iran, hinting at sanctions or worse. Yet Iran remained in compliance with the deal. They complied even after Trump backed out of it. Only after months of unilateral U.S. sanctions did Iran move away from its commitments under the JCPOA, announcing each move it would make in contradiction to the agreement, and consistently repeating it would come back into compliance if the U.S. would do so.
That is why Saudi and Israeli officials are so worried, and why they are mounting their offensive well before Joe Biden takes control. And this time, it will be harder to appease them.
In 2015, Obama made some very questionable agreements in order to mollify the Saudis and Israelis. He significantly boosted Israel’s annual aid, among other prizes, and agreed to support the Saudis in their assault on Yemen.
The Yemen war is very unpopular in the U.S., and the Saudi murder of Jamal Khashoggi has magnified the distaste for the Saudi royal family, even in Congress. It is going to be difficult for Biden to find any gifts he can give the Saudis that will be politically tolerable among Democratic voters and sufficient to mollify their concerns.
Israel will be even more complicated. Obama was able to sweeten U.S. military support for the Jewish state, but Biden may find that more complicated. While politically it’s not a difficult sell, the U.S. is already committed to a significant upgrade to Israel’s arsenal, so much of what Biden might have offered is already going to Israel. And this is a legal commitment, one that can’t be negotiated away.
The commitment arises from the proposed sale of advanced fighter jets and weaponized drones to the United Arab Emirates, a sale Donald Trump agreed to in exchange for the UAE giving him a foreign policy headline by agreeing to normalize relations with Israel.
It was a classic example of Trump’s lack of deal making skill. Israel and the UAE had relations that were barely secret for many years and had been working toward normalization for quite a while, long before Jared Kushner and Trump came on the scene. While some sort of American push might have been needed, this kind of arms deal was not necessary to incentivize the UAE to agree to a deal they’ve wanted for years.
But Trump vastly overpaid, as he so often did in foreign affairs. That would be embarrassing enough, but it gets worse, because the United States is legally obligated to guarantee Israel’s qualitative military edge in the region. This means that the U.S. is bound by law to ensure that Israel is armed sufficiently to repel an attack by any combination of Arab states, be they friend or foe. Therefore, upgrading the UAE’s capabilities by a huge leap means the U.S. must concomitantly upgrade Israel’s.
That’s why Israeli leaders who were initially outraged that Netanyahu would agree to this arms sale without consulting them were convinced to drop their objections, once they were assured by the Americans that their QME would be preserved. Even AIPAC lobbied in support of the UAE arms sale when it was threatened in the Senate.
Given the enormous access Israel already had to American armaments, and with this new largesse piled on top, is there even anything left for Biden to offer to calm Netanyahu over American re-entry into the Iran deal?
None of this means Biden can’t get back into the JCPOA. He will have popular support for the decision, , if he makes the case publicly, and there are plenty of Democrats who will back him. But Saudi Arabia and Israel will have strong allies in the GOP and among some Democrats as well. It will mean Biden will have to stand firm and display a good deal of political will and courage. We’ll see soon enough if he is up to the task, but it will certainly be a very different challenge than the one he helped his boss face five years ago.
My Recent Work
Joe Biden is a relief to many after four years of Donald Trump. But he does not bring hope, he does not bring change, and he is certainly not “new,” as one person called him. I look at the danger of the Biden presidency, and the concern that he represents the same stunted way of doing things that brought us Donald Trump in the first place in this piece and my second blog, High Crimes and Misdemeanors.
When Trump and his minions brokered normalization agreements between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain, it was a transparent effort at selling weapons. To get Sudan to agree to normalize, Trump and his henchman Mike Pompeo strongarmed Sudan, a country with a collapsed economy that is struggling to overcome decades of a brutal dictatorship. But to get the deal with Morocco, he reversed U.S. policy on the Sahrawi people, trampling their rights just as he has the Palestinians’ and so many others. I explore this in this piece for Responsible Statecraft.
A coalition of Christian groups and churches came together to urge Joe Biden to prioritize finding a way forward in the effort to end the occupation of the Palestinian people. I make a few comments, and you can find the entire coalition statement here at ReThinking Foreign Policy.
Finally, as I mentioned in the article above, I examine how four years of Donald Trump has emboldened Benjamin Netanyahu and will make him even harder for Biden to deal with in my latest piece for Responsible Statecraft.
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My first book, co-authored with Marc Lamont Hill, will be out on February 16, 2021. You can pre-order Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics from an independent bookseller by clicking here.
I strongly recommend the newsletter, Foreign Exchanges. It’s put out by Derek Davison and is an invaluable resource for keeping up with affairs all around the globe. Sign up for it here.
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