May 18, 2021/ Paris, France



JCPOA 2.0? Opportunities and Challenges






Eric M. Brewer

Deputy Director and Senior Fellow, Project on Nuclear Issues, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)


We have done the overview, the history and now I will move ahead a few steps. My remarks will focus on the prospects, if the United States and Iran are able to return to compliance with the JCPOA, of building on that deal, and mostly on the nuclear angle to this, and leave out discussions on regional dynamics and the missile issue which are the two other issues the US would like to talk about, recognizing, of course, that those are potentially related in some instances, even if talks are occurring in separate venues.


I will start by saying the obvious: we can all come up with a long list of reasons why building on the JCPOA will be difficult. To be clear, I am assuming we go back into the deal, compliance to compliance, and not talking about renegotiating a new deal. But even so, I think we all recognize why it would be incredibly hard. It is not hard to come up with a list of reasons why. The US tried to ask for more during JCPOA negotiations and didn’t get it, so that suggests that maybe Iran sort of topped out and went as far as it was willing to go in that scenario. Maybe there is no more room to go, it is not going to make any more concessions on the nuclear program.


Second, as we all know the domestic politics of both countries are incredibly complicated when it comes to negotiations and striking a deal. Even if the JCPOA can be salvaged, it is fair to say that we are very skeptical of US motivations for a following deal moving forward. Arguably, even a deal that just focuses on the nuclear program and tries to do this longer and stronger type of deal that the US talks about will face a lot of domestic criticism in the US, if other issues are not tackled as well, such as Iran’s support for terrorism and the missile program. So there are a lot of hurdles.


It is easy to see and to say why the JCPOA 2.0 could be difficult if not impossible, but I think it is worth talking about why such talks may actually be possible and in very broad terms what an approach at JCPOA 2.0 might look like. One overarching reason why it may be possible is because neither Iran or the US is completely satisfied with the JCPOA as it is. There are things that each side doesn’t like about the deal, let’s start by looking at the United States. If there is one area of bipartisan agreement on Iran right now, it is that the JCPOA alone is insufficient as an agreement between the United States and Iran. It said it has to be the starting point, not the end point for negotiations. That is a weird and rare point of consensus within the US domestic politics on Iran right now. So, there is no shortage of a desire to see those talks get on their way. I would also argue that in a generalized sense there is agreement on the types of things the US will seek in the following deal including longer sunset provisions, strengthening monitoring provisions. Right now, a lot of this conversation is really occurring at the surface, it hasn’t really gone in depth in a lot of cases to think at a more detailed level. Of course, there are key differences over what is realistically achievable and the best approaches to do that. The current administration and probably a lot of Democrats want to go back into the JCPOA, they see it as a path towards that bigger better deal whereas Republicans and critics of the deal think that doing that will just cause the US to lose leverage and that the deal is never going to be achievable. But of course, these are test propositions, things that we can test, so I think there are reasons to test those out.


Turning to Iran, it has been clear that the JCPOA only is going to cover nuclear issues. It made it clear time and time again, it is not prepared to discuss missile and regional developments as part of the deal. However, I argue that if you look at the statements made by Iranian leaders, they have been so much inconsistent on whether or not they will be willing to enter into talks, following the revitalization of the JCPOA, on these other issues, right in August 2020. Even some of this occurred under the Trump administration. In August 2020 president Rouhani said that talks with the US might be possible if the US first return to the JCPOA. On several occasions the foreign minister Zarif has kept the door slightly ajar to talks on regional issues and missile issues. Of course, with caveats that these will be led by the region, not by the US, they will have to include other types of issues on a table like US military sales to countries in the region. We shouldn’t be surprised that Iran is asking for these types of things. But of course, these are not the decisions that the foreign minister is going to make, but the Iranian president is going to make the decisions with the Supreme Leader. But I think more importantly too there are other things that Iran was unhappy with at the JCPOA and that list got a lot longer after the Trump administration withdrew from the deal, imposed unilateral sanctions and tried to orchestrate the snapback provision in the UN Security Council. We have a decent indication of some of things that Iran would like to fix as part of the JCPOA and part of what it would probably conclude are, to borrow a US phrase, the fatal flaws of the deal. There are things making it easier for Iran to realize the economic benefits of the deal and things like the so-called U-turn transactions, removal of the US congressional sanctions which got papered over for obvious reasons in the JCPOA, abolishing the snapback provision and other measures to make sure that a future president cannot do what the Trump administration did. We have some clear examples of these comments. In February of this year foreign minister Zarif said that any negotiations with the US would have to address the need to guarantee from Washington that it won’t quit the deal again. A number of running officials have raised the need for economic compensation for the US maximum pressure campaign, there seems to be some agreement that this could be put off in the future negotiations. In January of this year the Supreme Leader’s foreign policy adviser Velayati said that if any future negotiations occur, Iran is going to have a conversation about eliminating snapback provision. All this is to say that there is a list of things each side might want as part of future negotiations. But it is one, at least from the US policy perspective, very big question whether the US should do any of this. And also, of course, it is completely unclear whether there is any sort of overlapping US and Iranian interests that can create a JCPOA 2.0.


When you do expanding, you start looking at some of these regional challenges, you have other countries that are now sitting at the table, the menu of potential options and incentives expands, because now you are just not talking about the US and Iran and other participants of the JCPOA. That is a new dynamic as well.


It is not surprising, as I said at the outset, that today both United States and Iran have largely focused on what they want and what they would want out of the following deal, not what they are willing to get, that is really where the crux of the matter is going to fall if talks ever get on their way for these discussions. For that reason, I would argue that any negotiations on the following deal will need to rethink not only the substance of the deal, but the structure, the scope, the participants of the deal. We will have to be creative on that.


I have informally kicked around three potential models or typologies of what a new JCPOA could look like. One is the Christmas tree model which dominates in the US conceptional thinking of the way the JCPOA works which is that it is the same basic bargain, the same structure, the same deal, we just hang some new ornaments on the JCPOA tree. We extend the sunsets here and in exchange we give Iran some additional sanctions relief. The same model with a bit more stuff on it that each side wants. But there is another model of that: rather than hanging ornaments on the tree, we start shooting off some branches of that tree and you essentially go to something that is more simplified, it is not a long detailed agreement as the JCPOA, maybe it is even a bilateral agreement, but you do “big for big” things - maybe trades, a full ban on weapons-grade uranium production or reprocessing and plutonium production for removal of snapback. The third model may be a regionalized agreement, and this is not a new idea. These are not mutually exclusive in some ways, you can combine them, but the other option is broadening some of the restrictions in the monitoring provisions to the region. That’s maybe more amenable to Iran and useful for the US in the long run. We talked a little bit about the risk of follow-on proliferation as a result of Iran’s nuclear program.


Those are three off the cuff ideas for discussion and debate, but the bottom-line is to be creative. Two other points that I will make: one is the major question looming over the issue of the JCPOA 2.0 which is the views of other JCPOA participants on this. We know the feelings of the E3 on appetite for another deal, their views on missile threat and Iran’s support for terrorism, but to me the views of Russia and China are a little bit less clear. This question will hang over this.


Finally, I will say that, as we approach the June Board of Governors meeting with the IAEA, one thing that I think would have happened regardless of whether or not the US stayed in the JCPOA and has happened since the JCPOA was finalized, is the outing of additional information about Iran’s former nuclear weapons program. It is worth noting that any future negotiation will have to contend with these ongoing questions on potentially undeclared activities and materials within Iran. You can like it or not, have conversations about what it means, but I think it is important for all sides whether or not you view that issue as incredibly important or not, to think about this question: what are the long-term prospects of the survivability of the nuclear deal with Iran if the IAEA is unable to resolve concerns about potentially undeclared activities and materials in Iran? This poses a real long-term challenge for the survivability of the deal.