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In the morning hours of November 24th the P5+1, the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (The United States, Russia, Great Britain, France, and China) and Germany reached a six month agreement with Iran over its nuclear program. Since 2002, when Iranian dissidents revealed the scope of Iran’s nuclear activities, the international community has tried to prevent Iran from acquiring the capacity to produce a nuclear weapon. The Islamic Republic insists that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, but the United States, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and other international actors believe that Iran is seeking to acquire a nuclear weapons program to enhance its strategic position in the Middle East. The agreement, the Joint Plan of Action, is an interim agreement that is supposed to lay the foundation for a more comprehensive deal that could prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons capability and lead to closer U.S.-Iranian relations, which have been strained since the Islamic Republic was born in 1979.
This topic brief will break down the Joint Plan of Action, evaluate the reactions of Americans, Saudis, and Israelis to the deal, and then discuss the chances for a more holistic agreement on Iran’s nuclear program by the summer of 2014.
Readers are also encouraged to use the links below and in the related R&D to bolster their files about this topic.
The Iranian Nuclear Program & The Joint Plan of Action
Before going into the specifics of the Joint Plan of Action, I encourage extempers to check out an interactive guide on Iran’s nuclear program from the Council on Foreign Relations. This will trace the history of Iran’s nuclear program and provides some important resources for those new to the topic. I also recommend that extempers read an article from The Diplomat on November 26th and file it because it provides a very detailed breakdown of the different components of the plan. Since you cannot put this topic brief in your files, but you can file articles, putting that article into your files will assist you in discussing elements of the Joint Plan of Action in future speeches. Finally, I recommend that extempers look at other topic briefs that we have done at Extemp Central about the Iranian nuclear program. Since this issue has been in the news since 2002, several generations of extempers have had to talk about it. Using all three of these resources can help you develop sufficient knowledge about Iran’s politics, its foreign policy outlook, and its nuclear program.
As the introductory paragraph to this topic brief explained, the Iranian nuclear program has attracted significant international attention since 2002. Iran cooperated with the United States in overthrowing the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001, but after President Bush labeled it as part of an “Axis of Evil” in his 2002 State of the Union Address, the Iranian government moved in a more conservative direction. Prior to 1979, the United States had a strong relationship with Iran, viewing it and Saudi Arabia as the main pillars of stability in the Middle East. During this time, Iran was ruled by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who came to power in September 1941. Shah Reza tried to modernize the Iranian economy and built up his armed forces with the assistance of the United States, but he was unable to show that these reforms benefitted the Iranian people and his unwillingness to create a democracy alienated the more educated parts of the Iranian population. In 1979, a popular uprising deposed Shah Reza and an Islamic Republic was established under the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The Islamic Republic was a blend of an Islamic theocracy with elements of democracy, as the Iranian people elected a parliament and a president, but a Guardian Council of Islamic clerics had veto powers over legislation. The Supreme Leader, a position that Khomeini occupied until his death in 1989, is the strongest official in the country as they appoint members of the country’s military and bureaucracy. After the Islamic Revolution, the administration of Jimmy Carter thought it could work with Khomeini. Carter’s early foreign policy emphasized human rights, so having the Shah deposed was not immediately seen as a problem. However, after Carter decided to let the Shah come to the United States for cancer treatment, conservative Iranian student attacked the American Embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979 and took fifty-two Americans hostage. The crisis nearly provoked a war with the United States and some historians argue that America armed and encouraged Iraq to attack Iran September 1980. A rescue mission sent by Carter failed to free the hostages and the crisis went on for 444 days. The crisis was one of the reasons that Carter lost the 1980 presidential election to Ronald Reagan and on January 20, 1981, minutes after Reagan took the oath of office, the hostages were released. Since the hostage crisis, relations between the United States and Iran have been poor and the U.S. does not have normalized relations with the Islamic Republic at the present time.
When it was revealed that Iran had a nuclear program that it was covertly building, the United States decided to pursue a policy of sanctions against the Iranian government to get it to stop enriching uranium. At the time, the United States was in Afghanistan trying to find Osama bin Laden and was getting ready to invade Iraq, so Iran was not a top priority and was seen in the company of North Korea, whose illicit nuclear production was revealed in early January 2003. After the Iraq campaign, some international analysts wondered if an attack on Iran was imminent and I remember getting questions during that time that asked “Is Iran next?” However, as the Iraqi campaign soured, it was clear that the United States did not have the resources to leave a third war and the U.S. turned to working through the United Nations to deter Iran’s nuclear program. Russia played a leading role in early negotiations with Iran, offering to enrich uranium in Russia and then provide it to the Iranians for fuel if all they desired was a nuclear power program. However, this overture was rebuffed. The Israelis have made suggestions that they might unilaterally attack Iran’s nuclear program, like they did against the Iraqi nuclear program in 1981 and Syria’s program in 2007, but the United States urged restraint and gave signals that it would not support a hasty Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The Obama administration has continued President Bush’s approach toward sanctioning Iran and successfully built up strong financial sanctions against the Iranian regime. The Islamic Republic is very sensitive to sanctions, since existing oil sanctions are costing the regime $30 billion over the next six months and as The Washington Post explains on November 27th, the lack of investment in Iran has created high rates of unemployment, which have disproportionately impacted the country’s youth. Iranians under the age of twenty-four are 45% of the country’s population and their discontent with the conservative direction of the government helped reformist candidate Hassan Rohani win the presidency this summer. Rohani has pushed for less abrasive rhetoric toward the West and for Iran to negotiate its way out of the sanctions regime and the fact that he is not former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who one pledged to wipe Israel off the map, likely helped Western nations push for the Joint Plan of Action.
Extempers should realize that the Joint Plan of Action is not a final agreement. It is supposed to exist for six months while the P5+1 and Iran work towards a comprehensive deal that will dictate how much of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure it gets to keep and how the international community can monitor its facilities so that it does not build a nuclear weapon. The final deal will also include sufficient relief from sanctions that have been imposed on the regime over the last decade. Iran Matters, a blog that is sustained by Harvard University about the Iranian nuclear program, points out on November 26th that the current deal will see Iran suspend its enrichment program for six months, suspend work on its Arak 40 megawatt heavy water research reactor, cease enriching uranium at a 20% level and go down to civilian production rate of 5% enrichment, and allow for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to monitor its facilities with inspections and cameras. For Iran giving this up, the P5+1 nations have agreed to suspend some of the sanctions on Iran, which are estimated to be worth $7 billion. Not all sanctions are going away and President Obama has told opponents of the Joint Plan of Action that 90% of the existing sanctions against Iran will remain. Therefore, this plan is an interim measure that is designed for both sides to show good faith. If the Iranians allow inspectors into their facilities and do not try to get around the agreement, they will show that they are reliable partners to strike a long-term deal. Similarly, if the international community releases some sanctions on Iran then it will illustrate to Iran that it is willing to reward good behavior. Reuters notes on November 29th that the deal will be implemented in January, which means that diplomats will have until June to produce a longer agreement. Some analysts have speculated that there may be a new accord in six months that will be another interim deal, since it is unlikely that a lasting agreement will be reached over the next six months.
The biggest part of the deal is that Iran will cease enriching uranium at less than 20%. The Reuters article above mentions that uranium can fuel nuclear power plants, which is what the Iranians claim that they are trying to do, but it can also produce the fissile material necessary for a nuclear weapon if it is processed to a high level. The Brookings Institution on November 24th explains that any of the 20% enriched uranium that Iran possesses must be diluted to 5% or converted to an oxide, which would prevent it from being used in the immediate term for a nuclear weapon. The Atlantic on November 27th explains that when a country enriches uranium to 20% it is nine-tenths of the way to having material needed for a nuclear weapon. By keeping Iran’s enrichment at a civilian-level of 3.5-5%, the international community has seemingly moved Iran back from closing in on the development of a nuclear weapon.
The one area that the deal does not address is the right of Iran to enrich material. Under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) countries have the right to have peaceful nuclear programs. Iran argues that it has the right to enrich uranium for civilian purposes, but due to skepticism in the international community negotiators are wary of giving Iran this right in full. The Diplomat of November 26th points out that a final deal will have to address this subject and since Iran made the bulk of concessions in this interim agreement, the P5+1 nations will have to give up more in a final deal, which would include recognizing Iran’s right to enrich uranium. This would be a major shift in U.S. foreign policy as the United States previous “red line” on Iran was that the country would need to halt all enrichment activities for sanctions to be lifted.
Reaction to the Agreement
Domestically, the Obama administration has championed the Joint Action Plan as a significant foreign policy success and hopes that it can overwhelm some of the negative stories that the administration has had to deal with over the last few weeks regarding the botched rollout of the Affordable Care Act. However, The Diplomat of November 28th says that even though polls show that most Americans like the agreement with Iran, the deal will probably not help the administration as much domestically as it think it will. This is due to the fact that economic issues continue to be the top priority for Americans and foreign policy has traditionally been one of the low priorities for voters in election cycles. The administration can take credit for taming a small increase in gas prices as the deal will allow Iran to export more of its crude oil onto the world market and as The Washington Post explained on November 25th, after the deal was announced the price of a barrel of crude oil fell 77 cents. The Economist of November 25th explained that a CNN poll found that Americans favored the deal by a 56-39% margin, which should insulate the administration from critics of the deal that say it gives too much to Iran. Politico on November 27th says that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been mum about the deal, but she is caught in a double bind over the issue. If Clinton comes out in favor of it, she might be seen as trying to take some of the credit away from current Secretary of State John Kerry and it might raise questions about why she could not secure a deal in that same position during Obama’s first term. However, if she comes out against it this could cost her some support among Obama’s backers when she might try to run for president in 2016. Nevertheless, Clinton will have to take a stand at some point, whether in the immediate term or on the campaign trail in 2016 and since she has traditionally adopted more of a pro-Israeli policy line, it is likely that she is cautious about whether the Iranians will live up to the terms of the agreement.
President Obama also has to find a way to assuage Republican and Democratic critics in Congress, who think that the administration is giving too much to Iran for an interim deal. The Los Angeles Times of November 27th says that these opponents believe that existing sanctions were working and may have felt that keeping them in place might topple the Islamic Republic, thereby averting a war. These critics also argue that since the sanctions were working more, not fewer, sanctions are needed on the Iranian regime to get them to stop uranium enrichment. The American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which is the top pro-Israel lobby in the country, has also been exercising influence behind the scenes to get Congress to pass more sanctions against Iran, which the Obama administration has warned could harm the agreement. Since the Joint Action Plan is not binding on any party, the Council on Foreign Relations on November 26th explains that it does not have to be approved by the Senate. This will help the administration carry out the agreement with the rest of the international community and avoid a distracting battle in Congress. However, a final deal would likely require Congressional approval, which is a battle that extempers should be ready to talk about next season if a lasting agreement is made with the Islamic Republic.
The biggest opponent of the deal, unsurprisingly, is Israel, which sees Iran’s nuclear ambitions as a threat to its existence. The Islamic Republic, like most Middle East nations, does not recognize Israel’s right to exist and conservative politicians have called for its destruction. For Israeli conservatives and the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Iran is a twenty-first century Nazi Germany with genocidal aims toward Jews in the Middle East. Israel notes that Iran continues to support terrorist groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon and has fought to keep Bashar al-Assad in power in Syria, which illustrate the dangers of giving Iran a nuclear weapon. However, as The Economist of November 25th points out, the Israeli opposition to a deal with Iran could produce a foreign policy rift with the United States, as American Jews do not favor a military strike against Iran and that only 52% of Americans support an American military intervention. If Israel were to launch a unilateral strike against Iran’s facilities, which experts say would only embolden the Iranian regime to seek a nuclear weapon faster and would not effectively cripple Iran’s nuclear capabilities, it would run the risk of not having American support and could lose a long-term war. Furthermore, Israel’s opposition to Iran has struck some analysts as unwise because it possesses the Middle East’s only nuclear arsenal, which is estimated to be at least 200 warheads. Israel has never officially claimed nuclear capability, but Seymour Hersh’s The Samson Option, which I highly recommend extempers read if they are interested in the Israeli program, argues that Israel acquired nuclear capability with the help of the French government in the 1960s. The Israelis also allegedly helped the apartheid regime of South Africa acquire nuclear weapons capability as well, but South Africa gave up its program before apartheid fell. The Christian Science Monitor notes on November 26th that Israel does not want Iran to have any enrichment capacity in a final deal, but this is unlikely to exist because Iran views its nuclear program as a source of national pride. Any agreement that eliminated all of its enrichment capability would make the Islamic Republic seem weak in the eyes of most Iranians, would hurt the existing government’s legitimacy, and would be seen as a surrender to Israeli interests, which the Islamic Republic can ill-afford. Israel is likely to hate a final deal on Iran, since Iran will maintain enrichment capacity, but under the doctrine of mutually assured destruction (MAD) it is likely that Israel could create havoc for Iran if it launched a nuclear attack on the Jewish state.
Aside from Israel, Saudi Arabia is also highly critical of the Joint Action Plan, fearing that it is rewarding the Iranians for bad behavior. Whereas Saudi Arabia is a Sunni country, the Iranian government in Shi’ite in its religious beliefs, so the two are competing for prominence in the Middle East on religious grounds. The Saudis currently occupy a dominant leadership role in the region due to their oil capacity and ties to Western powers, but after the fall of Iraq, which allowed Shi’ites to take power over the Sunni minority that had ruled during the twentieth century, the Saudis have feared that Shi’ite forces are trying to take over the Middle East. The Saudis have been opposed to several moves by the Obama administration and The Washington Times on November 27th explains that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia was not happy that President Obama left the Saudis in the dark about the development of the Joint Action Plan. Jeremy Shapiro, a U.S. State Department official on its policy planning staff from 2009-2013, writes an excellent article in Foreign Policy on November 26th about the U.S.-Saudi relationship and argues that since the mid-1970s, the United States and Saudi Arabia have based their relationship on defense and economic grounds. The Saudis stabilize the world’s oil markets in return for an American defense guarantee. Defending Saudi Arabia from the territorial ambitions of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is what triggered the Persian Gulf War in 1990-1991 and the Saudis prevented oil shocks in Western countries by significantly enhancing their production capacity to make up for the loss of Kuwaiti and Iraqi oil during the conflict. The Saudis are angry that the United States is entertaining the idea of loosening severe sanctions on Iran, which have prevented it from exercising significant influence as a regional power, and they are also upset that President Obama is not providing more assistance to the Syrian opposition and doing enough for Palestinians. This year saw Saudi Arabia reject a seat on the United Nations Security Council in protest over American diplomacy and after the Joint Action Plan was announced the Saudis said that they would follow an independent course in foreign policy. The Saudis fear that if the Iranian government acquires a nuclear weapon that it will be able to bully other nations in the Middle East, that it could challenge Saudi Arabia’s control of Islamic religious sites, and could try to incite Shi’ite rebellions within Saudi Arabia. Some analysts fear that if Iran acquires a nuclear weapon that Saudi Arabia will begin its own nuclear program or might buy them from Pakistan. This could spark a dangerous arms race in the world’s most volatile region.
Chances for a Final Deal?
Extempers should follow every development that happens over the next six months over Iran’s nuclear program and due to the timing of the agreement, this means that by the time NFL Nationals rolls around in June the Joint Action Plan will be moving toward a comprehensive plan or another interim agreement that will extend the Joint Action Plan. Another interim plan could last for another six months, lasting for the duration of 2014, and see the P5+1 offer more sanctions relief in return for even more restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program. Due to this timing, I can bet you a lot of money that you will likely draw a question about the Iranian nuclear program and the Joint Action Plan at least once at a local, state, or national-level tournament over the next six months. During this time, Extemp Central will be cycling questions about the Iranian program so that you can use them for practice and talk about this subject from a variety of angles. This is why you need to make sure you are following all of the developments carefully. For example, I could see a scenario where a new interim or final agreement is announced the day that semi-finals are held at NFL or maybe even the final round. If you are not paying attention to what is happening in the world you could have your analysis become obsolete based on changing conditions. Therefore, make sure you pay very careful attention to what is taking place in the negotiations over a final agreement with Iran over the next six months.
While Iran does have an economic incentive to reach a final deal, it may prove hard to put the sanctions regime back on Iran if the interim agreement fails after six months. Sanctions networks take a great deal of time and effort to construct and require that countries give up potential investments for a greater goal. As the Iran Matters blog noted, it is very important that the P5+1 nations show that they can sustain sanctions if Iran is in non-compliance, but this may prove difficult once some countries reap the benefits of having Iran more open to business. For example, The Wall Street Journal on November 28th discussed how Turkey has already seen an increase in tourism bookings in light of the reduced international sanctions on Iran and The Diplomat of November 26th noted that China, India, South Korea, Turkey, and Taiwan will see increased Iranian oil shipments that will help with energy prices. Pakistan also welcomes the deal because it has a pipeline project that it wants to pursue with the Iranians. If Iran is not compliant with the demands of the P5+1 it might be harder to put the “sanctions genie” back in the bottle because countries may not want to endure higher energy prices or reduce income that would occur if sanctions went back on Iran. As the Council on Foreign Relations pointed out on November 24th, sanctions cannot last forever and it is best to secure a final agreement quickly with Iran before support for the sanctions infrastructure erodes.
However, there are reasons to be hopeful that a deal can be reached between the P5+1 and Iran. First, China and Russia are staking a lot of their geopolitical reputations on a deal and as The Economist of November 30th explains, they are not going to happy if the Iranians back out of the deal. These nations also hope to benefit from Iranian purchases of military equipment and see potential for investments in the Iranian oil and gas industry. If Iran backs out of an agreement these things will not happen, so these countries have a vested interest in making sure that Iran reaches a deal with Western nations. Also, the United States has an interest in making sure that Iran follows through with the deal in order to potentially engage the Iranians over Lebanon, Syria, and its support for terrorist groups. While these areas are problematic and sore points between the U.S. and Iran, they do offer the possibility of a breakthrough and a potential normalizing of American-Iranian relations. Additionally, although Saudi Arabia and Israel oppose the planned peace initiative with Iran over its nuclear program, Foreign Policy on November 26th explained that the United States might be able to assuage these concerns by extending security guarantees to these nations.
Overall, it will be very interesting to see where the future negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program are going. The deal could fall apart in an atmosphere of distrust, but if a final deal is eventually reached then it could become a template of how to make “rogue states” comply with international agreements on enrichment and avoid adding to the number of nuclear-armed nation-states.