The Iran nuclear deal is dead. Drones to Russia finished it off
Under pressure at home from nationwide demonstrations against the hijab laws, the Islamic Republic has thrown its lot in with Vladimir Putin (and China)
Sometimes the tectonic plates of the international order move abruptly, brutally, like a massive earthquake. Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is such an occasion. The significance is palpable, the aftershocks felt right across the globe.
At other times they shift almost imperceptibly masking inevitable and far-reaching consequences. Iran’s supply of military assistance to Russia is such a case.
It represents a deliberate and calculated shift by the Islamic Republic deeper into the league of autocracies. It has in effect turned its back on an accommodation with the West.
When Joe Biden’s won the US presidency in 2020 he declared that ‘America was back’ . Donald Trump’s erratic isolationism was consigned to the dustbin. Renegotiating a ‘stronger, better’ nuclear deal with Iran was to be the centrepiece of this new, active US diplomacy on the world stage.
The 2015 deal with Iran ( since scrapped by Trump) was backed by China, Russia, France, Germany and the UK. It’s aim was to prevent or, at any rate, slow the Islamic Republic’s acquisition of nuclear weapons.
Under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), negotiated on Barack Obama’s watch, Iran agreed to dismantle much of its nuclear programme, reduce its uranium stockpile, cut back on its enrichment centrifuges and allow international inspections.
Built into the deal was a tripwire that would give the world a year’s notice if Iran chose to resume making the bomb as many believe it would.
In return Iran – in dire economic straits - would receive billions of dollars in sanctions relief, paving the way for its eventual return to the international community. At least that was the theory. This (slim) hope now seems to have evaporated.
One of the unintended consequences of the war in Ukraine is that Tehran has become a supplier of lethal drones and military training to the Kremlin. This puts the regime, as far as Washington is concerned, even more beyond the pale.
Nobody is going to advocate lifting sanctions against Iran while its drones manned by Russians are killing Ukrainians. Putin’s war has buried any chance of a new deal.
But Iran’s choice is not irrational or impulsive. It’s a response to a hardening attitude by the regime to loss of control on its streets and a belief that it doesn’t have much more to lose.
The Iran nuclear deal, like Monty Python’s parrot, is dead. It is an ex-deal.
The Islamic revolution is under threat at home. Protests which erupted across the country last September following the death in custody of a young woman, Mahsa Amini, demanding an end to the so-called hijab laws, have shaken the government.
The breath-taking courage of young women even schoolgirls openly defying the state and its infamous ‘Morality Police’ quickly escalated into widespread strikes and broader anti-government civil disobedience.
The protests show no signs of abating. But far from loosening the state’s grip Supreme leader Ali Khameini is doubling down. Women who defy the hijab laws are beaten in public or thrown into jail. New measures are in the pipeline including extra surveillance, cutting protestors off from social service benefits and policing social media. There have been public hangings.
While it’s fighting for its survival at home the regime is extremely unlikely to negotiate with western countries making pesky human rights demands. The Iran nuclear deal like Monty Python’s parrot, is beyond resuscitation. It is an ex-deal.
But the mullahs may not mind. They may well have concluded that what the West has to offer is not worth the candle.
Instead Iran has chosen to move into the orbit of two (nuclear) powers that don’t make inconvenient demands and have something to offer: Russia and China.
Tehran signed a giant $400bn economic cooperation agreement with Beijing in 2021. And in return for drones, Russia has offered Teheran helicopters, jets and missile systems fuelling the arms race in the Gulf.
This is a significant shift in the geopolitical map which poses a serious challenge, not just to the Middle East, but to the wider influence of the liberal world in the face of Russian aggression and Chinese ambition.
But Iran can’t just be written off. It’s a country of global consequence. Its nearly 90 million people occupy a vast land mass strategically positioned in the world’s richest oil-bearing region. It foments trouble in a wide arc from Lebanon to Yemen and as far as Afghanistan.
The recent agreement with Saudi Arabia, brokered by China, to restore diplomatic relations with Tehran is a breakthrough. It provides some respite from the spiralling Sunni-Shia rivalry in the Gulf. But it is fragile thing.
Watching this from Iran’s near-abroad is a nervous and increasingly divided Israel. There is growing turmoil in Israel over the government’s assault on the judiciary and an increasingly heavy-handed support for new settlements in the occupied territories.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is back for a fifth time at the head of a heavily right-wing, ultra-religious coalition. He is under domestic pressure and the threat of prison for corruption. What would it take for him to launch a pre-emptive attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities if its centrifuges go into over-drive? And what would that lead to?
Israel makes no secret of its intention to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. It believes, not unreasonably, that a nuclear-armed Iran could pose an existential to the Jewish state.
A drone attack on an Iranian military facility in January in the city of Isfahan has been attributed to Israel.
The new alliance between China, Russia and Iran is troublesome. For one it has given Xi Jinping, China’s thrice-elected leader, another stage on which to parade his country’s growing influence. This puts the Americans in a real bind.
But it is what it is. And the West, declining in power and influence or not, must find a way to deal with the new reality.
There are no quick or obvious solutions to this predicament. Iran has apparently made its bed. It would like sanctions lifted but it looks at the state of the world in 2023 and calculates that America and the West no longer hold all the cards.
It would nevertheless be madness to give up on Iran or a fresh nuclear deal. In the short-term the best hope is that China will see that it is in best interests to calm things down.
In the longer term one can only hope that the young people who are standing up to the regime in Iran will create enough momentum to bring about change from the inside.