Insight
A new transatlantic consensus on Iran by Luigi Scazzieri, 19 January 2021
A new Iran nuclear crisis is brewing. Europeans should seize the opportunity to re-establish a common position with the US and try to revive the 2015 nuclear agreement that Donald Trump abandoned. One of the first international challenges facing incoming US President Joe Biden will be tackling a brewing nuclear crisis with Iran. In recent weeks, Tehran has increased its uranium enrichment to the critical 20 per cent threshold, far in excess of the level allowed by the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the 2015 nuclear agreement that US President Donald Trump abandoned in May 2018. Iran has also said it will conduct research into producing uranium metal, necessary for making nuclear warheads. Europeans and the US will have to quickly revive the JCPOA if they want put a brake on Iran’s nuclear programme and dampen tensions in the Middle East. Since Trump’s withdrawal, the JCPOA has unravelled despite the efforts of the EU, Russia and China to uphold it. Trump launched a ‘maximum pressure’ campaign against Iran, re-instating sanctions removed by the JCPOA and adding new ones, in an attempt to push Tehran to accept stricter limits on its nuclear programme than those in the JCPOA. Iran stuck to the agreement for a year, but in May 2019 started to breach the deal’s limits on its nuclear activities. Iran has now accumulated a stockpile of enriched uranium many times more than the deal allows, is using more advanced centrifuges to enrich uranium, carrying out forbidden research, enriching in facilities where it should not and building new facilities. The time it needs to produce a nuclear bomb has shrunk from one year under the JCPOA to as little as three months. Nevertheless, Iran has continued to allow nuclear inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency, providing some transparency over its activities. The steps Iran has taken to expand its nuclear program are reversible – though it cannot eradicate the knowledge acquired through its research. While expanding its nuclear activities, Iran has simultaneously increased its hostile actions against the US and its allies in the Middle East to retaliate against US sanctions. Iran has seized commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, carried out attacks on US forces through its proxies, and was almost certainly behind a 2019 attack on oil installations in Saudi Arabia that temporarily knocked out half its production. Trump responded to Iran’s actions by increasing sanctions, ordering the killing of Qasem Soleimani, the high-profile commander of Iran’s elite Quds force, and threatening broader military retaliation. CER INSIGHT: A new transatlantic consensus on Iran 19 January 2021
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