EU’s JCPOA moment

The European Union (EU)’s foreign policy Chief Josep Borrell held delicate talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian recently. In their talks, nuanced Iranian rationales to cut through nuclear deal sticking points became apparent. This includes the understanding that all signatories to the original Iran nuclear deal need to prioritise result-oriented dialogue to revive stalled momentum. After all, the U.S. continues to take exception to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and has made no secret of focusing foreign attention on Iran’s internal protests rather than the nuclear deal’s conclusion.

Delicate negotiations, as well as a widening U.S.-Iran trust deficit, have made the role of Brussels even more critical to a breakthrough in JCPOA talks. Several original European signatories have already signalled varying degrees of success on a revived deal, and saw its conclusion as a near-term possibility. It is in this context that the Borrell-Amir exchange illuminates possibilities for a greater European role than assumed. “Borrell highlighted his efforts to exhort the parties to the Vienna talks to adhere to their JCPOA obligations, stressing that he will continue his contacts to set the stage for achieving an understanding in this regard,” reported the Tehran Times over the weekend.

The Iranian push to remove unilateral sanctions imposed by the U.S. is also a vital demand at the heart of the nuclear deal deadlock. Washington is operating on the assumption that sustaining such unilateral measures would somehow translate into leverage for it. But that rationale largely ignores that sanctions, by definition, hurt the very people that the U.S. claims to be supporting. Moreover, it weakens the legal argument for the U.S. in nuclear deal talks when it is Washington – not Tehran – that had imposed such measures under a ‘maximum pressure’ campaign against Iran.

That campaign was part of the Trump administration’s own undoing in the JCPOA saga, and Biden must identify in a different light if the goal is to coexist with Iran under a new deal in the future. Given frequent support from Iranian allies on removing these illegal sanctions, including support from China and Russia, inaction only reinforces Tehran’s view that the U.S. tactics will lead to more complications.

All this spotlights Brussels’ pivotal role in understanding that economic penalties sit oddly with nuclear deal revival talks, as the latter is a negotiated consensus for regional peace. In fact, the entire purpose of the nuclear deal’s revival is to generate greater alignment between all parties by ensuring mutual compliance, not discord. It is in this context that Borrell’s talk with Amir-Abdollahian is a rare chance for Brussels to refocus attention on nuclear deal sticking points that have hampered headway towards concluding the deal, despite a quiet consensus among negotiators lingering for long.

Interestingly, Brussels’ leverage in advancing JCPOA momentum is difficult to ignore. For one, it was a key player, alongside original JCPOA signatories, to take the lead in indirect messaging between Washington and Tehran at the peak of tensions. Moreover, in wake of the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the pact, there is a sense that Europe occupies middle ground on credible nuclear deal concessions that are acceptable to Tehran as well as Washington. Europe has earned its credibility as a trusted medium of communication in the context of a JCPOA revival, and the Borrell exchange is hard proof of that.

But delivering on a concluded nuclear deal demands much more. For instance, France, Germany and the United Kingdom – known as the (E3) – issued a controversial statement against Iran’s recent uranium enrichment, but offered little to address Iran’s underlying reservations to act that way. Tehran was visibly upset over a resolution that formally criticised Iran over ‘insufficient cooperation’ with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Rather than bringing Iranian reservations in line with the IAEA’s criticism, the E3 sought to single-out Iran’s uranium actions as some standalone provocation worthy of censure. This is not what responsible European leadership delivered in the past.

“The E3, along with our partners, have done our utmost to negotiate a return to a reasonably restricted Iranian nuclear programme,” read the E3 statement at the time. “After many months of negotiations, the JCPOA Coordinator tabled viable deals in March and again in August this year which would have returned Iran to full compliance with its JCPOA commitments and returned the U.S. to the deal.”

To that end, Borrell’s candid exchange with Amir-Abdollahian indicates more openings for Europe to coordinate competing nuclear deal expectations between the U.S. and Iran. If Iran’s controversial uranium enrichments are a challenge, so are unilateral U.S. sanctions that have brought an entire economy to its knees. Conscious additions to that pile of sanctions does nothing to advance a deal that is supposed to serve the interests of all powers.

Brussels must therefore define what those ‘interests’ look like for a simple reason: lack of inaction reflects very poorly on the EU’s resolve to see the deal till the end.

The writer is a foreign affairs commentator and recipient of the Fulbright Award