With Joe Biden, the speeches of foreign policy find a classic invoice. Semantics matter and absences deserve to be noted. Speaking Thursday, February 4 at the State Department, the American leader gave diplomats a short roadmap, in addition to the warm testimony of his confidence. One subject was strangely absent: Iran. But the rescue of the Iranian nuclear agreement (JCPoA), from which Donald Trump had chosen to exit, is the most urgent and complex issue for the new administration. It has sharp experts, such as the new special envoy, Robert Malley, or the national security adviser, Jake Sullivan.
This oversight in the president’s speech is inspired by legitimate prudence. “We are witnessing an ongoing public negotiation between the United States and Iran on how to return to the agreement, says James Acton, nuclear policy expert at the Carnegie Center. The White House is cautious because it does not want to appear desperate. Iran’s position has evolved in the right direction in recent weeks. But the longer we wait, the harder it will be. Either the JCPoA is re-glued in the next two months, or we risk never having an agreement of this kind again, if everything collapses. “
Serious violations
The team gathered around Joe Biden is faced with a double equation, temporal and political. It is about acting quickly, but without spreading an impression of culpable haste or simple duplicate of the Obama era, which could tense Congress and regional allies, such as Israel and Saudi Arabia. Washington wants to be demanding of Iran, while finding incentives to push this country back from the precipice where it has positioned itself, while its economy is bloodless.
Since the spring of 2019, Iran has freed itself from most of its obligations, under the JCPoA, in terms of research and development, quantity of low-enriched uranium, driven centrifuges. Theoretically, the buildup of fissile material needed to make a bomb has become a matter of a few months, from three to six according to experts.
The two serious violations recently claimed concern the manufacture of uranium metal and the 20% enrichment of uranium. On December 2, in reaction to the assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, often presented as the mastermind of Iran’s nuclear program, Parliament passed a law that provides for the end of the application of the additional protocol of the International Energy Agency atomic (IAEA). This would imply drastic restrictions on the inspectors charged with verifying the civilian purpose of the Iranian program. The protocol is supposed to end on February 21. If so, what would be left to save in the JCPoA? It is understood: it is impossible to go back to the strict situation of 2015, any more than one can put the toothpaste back in its tube. But what would an empty tube be for?
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