In the way it deals with its relationship with the Joe Biden administration, Iran is behaving as though it is the “victor” of the US presidential election. It is putting conditions on recommitting to the nuclear deal, striving to put its cards in order with allies, as it is doing with Moscow and Beijing, and it is calling on both to support its position vis a vis Washington, as they are among the six countries that signed the agreement. It is also issuing warnings that it will pressure International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors and threatening to prevent them from returning to inspect their nuclear sites if Washington does not back down from its suspension of its commitments to the agreement.
Iran’s government spokesman Ali Rabiei recently said: “The US will not have all the time in the world. This opportunity is also limited for the European signatories to the agreement.”
However, the spokesman overlooks the fact that Iran is the one being subjected to sanctions and that it, not Washington nor the Europeans, is most in need of saving its freefalling economy and breaking its isolation, which will exacerbate with the return of the strength of Washington’s alliance with Europe’s capitals to what it had before the Trump administration. Consequently, Tehran is the party that must consider that it does not have all the time in the world to take the opportunity for the resumption of the deal’s commitments.
Any effort to explain the reasons for Iran’s behavior would inevitably conclude that it is built on an erroneous reading of the Biden administration’s position on the Iran nuclear deal and other Middle Eastern issues.
Tehran believes that Biden has come to the White House to pursue vengeful policies that do away with everything Donald Trump’s administration had done, and it thinks that walking back on Trump’s uncompromising approach to dealing with Iran is on top of the new administration’s priority list.
Of course, Biden is changing quite a few of his predecessor’s policies, regarding the climate accord, the border wall with Mexico, nationals from select Muslim majority countries’ ability to come to the United States, and the way the US communicates with its allies around the world, and others. However, on several occasions before and after he was elected, Biden was clear concerning the requisites for Washington’s recommitment to the nuclear deal. They can be summed up with the following three conditions:
1- Iran’s resumption of total commitment to the terms of the nuclear deal beforehand (that is, before Washington’s return).
2 - The necessity of formulating a joint policy for confronting Iran with Washington’s European allies who signed the agreement (France, Britain and Germany).
3 - The need to consider the current agreement as a starting point for new negotiations that explicitly encompass the issues of Iran’s ballistic missiles, its interference in the internal affairs of several Arab countries and that Washington’s allies in the region take part in those negotiations.
Joe Biden, as nominee and then as president, stated his position on these issues on several occasions. Among the most important expressions of his stance is an article he wrote for CNN in September, two months before he was elected, entitled There’s a smarter way to be tough on Iran. A second is his discussion with Thomas Friedman published in the New York Times, where Biden backtracked on his commitment to the agreement with Iran. However, he did criticize Trump from two starting points; the first is that going back on the agreement allowed Tehran to enrich Uranium unchecked and increase its production tenfold compared to the amount it had been producing before the agreement, thereby making its program more dangerous for its neighbors. The second is that this retreat left the US isolated even from its allies, who refused to go along with it and backtrack on their commitment to the deal.
The European stance on the issue is different today, with their position so close to that of Washington that the two are almost fully aligned. The phone call between Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron was followed by an announcement by an advisor to the French president in which he said that Iran “must refrain from further provocations, and second they must respect what they are no longer respecting if they want the United States to return to it.”
The German and British governments share this position. It is known that the three countries share many objections to Iran’s practices and behavior in the region.
On the other hand, Tehran is working on gaining the support of its two traditional allies, Moscow and Beijing, benefiting from the expected escalation of their disputes with the Biden administration.
After the first meeting between Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif since Biden assumed the presidency, Lavrov put the responsibility for the resumption of the nuclear deal on Washington. He said that its return is a requisite to Iran respecting its obligations and “saving this important agreement.”
He added that Moscow and Tehran have a single position and that Moscow will not tolerate the “provocations” that Tehran is being subjected to and are pushing it towards confrontation with Washington. Zarif called for preserving the unity of Moscow and Tehran’s position.
The question the Iranians have to be asking themselves must be: what can Moscow and Beijing do for them after they failed to provide any help to save the Iranian economy over the past three years, since the Iranian economy came under the pressure of US sanctions? And so, what cards can Iran play to confront the conditions the Biden administration has put for the resumption of the agreement?
Through its apparent intransigence, Iran wants to signal that it is not in a hurry to agree terms with the Biden administration or comply with its conditions. Perhaps it has been trying to play the traditional internal game by putting the new US administration and the Western powers in front of a choice between dealing with either a “moderate or hardline” Iran as it is about to hold new presidential elections. But these countries have tried this game before and have become aware that pandering is not a realistic or useful approach so long as decision-making on solutions in Tehran is in the hands of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards.
If Tehran is actually not in a hurry, as it wants to indicate, Washington is not rushing either. Antony Blinken, in his statement to the Senate during the hearing for his approval as Secretary of State, said that he does not expect to come to a swift agreement with Iran because Washington will need time to assess Tehran’s compliance to its commitments even if it were to return to the deal, and “we're a long way from there.”
He also called on Tehran to refrain from its “worrying behavior” in the region, adding a phrase that clearly demonstrates the direction the Biden administration will take: “It’s vitally important that we engage on the takeoff, not the landing, with our allies.”
An essential phrase that Tehran should process so that it becomes aware that it does not have the luxury to wait and see: who will back down first?
