Iran in the first 100 days of Biden and Harris - a window of opportunity?
The Roman military man Quintus Sertorius, haranguing his supporters, asserted that perseverance prevails over violence, and that many things that cannot be achieved when they remain united, are achieved when they are obtained step by step. This thought does not seem strange to the ayatollahs, nor does it seem that they are unaware of Heraclitus' idea of change, judging by how Iranian strategy has remained patient, fluid, and amorphous, without responding to provocations or making visible anything that would make the regime vulnerable to American military intervention. In any case, if the real objective of Donald Trump by removing the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action –the 2015 multilateral agreement by which Iran accepted the supervised restriction and gradual dismantling of its atomic program, in exchange for obtaining facilities for its foreign trade– was for Iran to desist from its nuclear program, recent reports on the progress of the uranium enrichment program testify to the failure of the Trump Administration's plans, something that seems to have been tacitly acknowledged with the roadshow of aircraft carriers, B-52 bombers, submarines and other military assets in the Gulf shortly before the anniversary of the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani, head of the Quds Force.
If anything, the real motivation had more to do with stoking tensions in the Middle East to chronicle instability in the area, and undermining China's trade expansion in both the Mediterranean countries of the Levant and the surrounding region in the process by deterring Beijing from undertaking further investment in Iran to develop the rail infrastructure needed for the New Silk Road corridor, The White House's strategy has been reasonably successful, inflicting enormous economic and social costs on Iran, which, along with the assassinations of Qassem Soleimani and Mohsen Fajrizadeh, will be used as a bargaining chip in the negotiations with Biden to get back on track with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, of which, let us remember, China is a cosignatory with large vested interests in reinstating the agreement.
On the one hand, Iran will demand to participate in the multi-million dollar reconstruction projects in Syria, as well as free access to the markets of Iraqi consumer goods and energy supplies, in addition to the exploitation of the railway line between the city of Shalamcheh in Iran and Basra in Iraq, which integrates the Iranian railroads with the extensive Iraqi railroad network, a key element in facilitating Iranian transit trade to Syria and Lebanon, something that conflicts with the economic interests of America's allies in the Gulf, at a time when the future of their oil-dependent economies is in question. This is especially significant in the case of Saudi Arabia, whose central diplomatic axis, since the founding of the Gulf Cooperation Council in 1981, has been to create a united Arab front against Iran, which Qatar never joined, and which has metamorphosed after the normalization of relations with Israel by the now outgoing US president.
Therefore, we can foresee that in the inevitable rounds of negotiations with Iran we will see shadows like those of Plato's cave allegory, while the discussions revolve around fundamentally economic elements, which will require the unofficial participation of the Arab countries and Israel. and that Iran will use the development of its nuclear program more as a fulcrum to achieve a certain normalization than for any real interest in having the same type of atomic sovereignty that the United States, Russia, China, France and the United Kingdom, the other signatories of the treaty, hypocritically enjoy, and that North Korea has shown that it can be achieved despite embargoes and sanctions. However, it is as easy for Iran to enrich uranium as it is to reverse the process, under the necessary conditions and with the right incentives.
This, far from making Biden's task easier, makes it more arduous, because, in its dispute with Teheran, Washington has exhausted practically all the bloodless levers, in the form of coercive diplomacy, at its disposal, so that the Biden Administration has no more negotiating tools left than to reverse the path taken by Trump, which in practical terms means concessions to Iran and compensation, and to the Gulf countries, not only material, but also geostrategic; for example, obtaining an Iranian commitment to pressure the Hutus to rejoin the political process in Yemen, the small Vietnam that Saudi Arabia has on its southern border, where devastation and famine reign. Trump's decision to designate Yemeni Houthis as a terrorist group, which has been labeled by the UN as an "act of political vandalism," goes in the opposite direction, but offers Biden an opportunity to make a goodwill gesture to redirect the situation.
But the new US administration will have to act soon. On the one hand, there is a high probability that a hard-line president will replace Rohaní in this year's elections, so it is in the interest of the US and its allies to alleviate as soon as possible the economic situation that is gripping the Iranian population in the midst of the pandemic. The Iranian people remember that before the signing of the Comprehensive Joint Plan of Action, the country was plunged into a deep recession due to a brutal depreciation of its currency and exorbitant inflation, in good measure as a result of the sanctions against its energy sector. After the agreement, and the subsequent lifting of sanctions, inflation slowed down, exchange rates stabilized and exports, especially oil, agricultural products and luxury goods to the EU increased significantly. This ephemeral economic improvement collapsed abruptly when the US withdrew from the agreement, and the new sanctions began to have tangible effects on the Iranian population.
It is therefore imperative that Biden's team frames the problem in diplomatic, rather than military, terms, which is hard to do without the assistance of its European partners. China does not care one bit about the welfare of the Iranian population, as evidenced by the kind of investments and military cooperation agreements that Beijing has recently established with Tehran, and the same goes for Moscow. Therefore, a division of roles between the US and the EU, in which the Europeans focus on improving the living conditions of the Iranian people, and making progress on the human rights agenda, can help Biden decode the institutional imbalances and power relations in Iran, in order to re-situate the scenario in the region without becoming the only target of antagonism in Washington. After all, to use Robert Kagan's phraseology, Europe has no choice but to play Venus, because, as José Borrell well knows, it could not play Mars no matter how much it wanted to.
Consequently, Brussels must make virtue of the need, opening the focus of the negotiation for the return of Iran and the US to the treaty, introducing into the discussions parallel objectives to those focused on security, in order to address issues of bilateral cooperation that will allow a dialogue to be initiated in the fields of politics, human rights and the role of women in Iranian civil society, possibly through UN Security Council Resolution 1325. Not to mention economic affairs, science, education and culture and, of course, agriculture and the environment, in the light of the European Green Deal.
Of course, the repressive and reactionary character of the Iranian regime, as well as the complicity of the impermeable network of authorities and related civil actors, make this a difficult challenge for the European Union, especially since, unlike the case of the countries of Eastern Europe and North Africa, the EU lacks experience in direct support to civil society in Iran, so their understanding of what is happening within Iranian society depends excessively on information provided by civil society groups in exile, on the one hand, and on the confrontational rhetoric that has characterized State Department policy from the triumph of Donald Trump in 2016 to his final days. Brussels needs not only to find its own voice –in harmony with that of Washington– but to urgently develop a comprehensive plan of action that will allow the voices of the scapegoating victims that those trapped in Iran have become to be heard.