Looking to a Comprehensive Nuclear Agreement with Iran Assessing Claims and Counter Claims over New Sanctions
Quicktabs: Citation
Advocates of additional sanctions maintain that sanctions forced Iran back to the negotiating table, and that if pressure got them to the table, then more pressure will force them to do accede to more of our demands during the negotiations.
Counter-claim: Skeptics maintain that the reasons for Iran’s return to the bargaining table were more complex than supporters suggest, and that domestic economic mismanagement and Iranian politics played a crucial role.3
Detractors of new sanctions insist that the “if some is good, more is better” logic as dangerously simplistic. Any doctor, for example, would object to the same reasoning if applied to prescription medicine. Medicine administered at a certain dosage can improve the health of a patient, but if that patient turns around and doubles it, they might poison themselves. Imposing new sanctions in the middle of a negotiation, critics claim, will poison the negotiations. As the top intelligence official in the United States told Congress, new sanctions “would undermine the prospects for a successful comprehensive nuclear agreement with Iran.”4
More broadly, a “punishment only” approach is likely to fail. If countries make concessions, as Iran did in the JPOA, responding with additional punishments reduces their incentive to make further concessions for a final agreement.5 In addition, Iran has demonstrated a very high capacity to endure pain. Recent sanctions have imposed large costs on the Iranian economy, but Iran suffered greater economic pain from the sanctions imposed during the Iran–Iraq War and endured more than 200,000 casualties. Sanctions alone will not force Iran to capitulate.
Assessment: Both proponents and opponents are partly right. Sanctions did contribute to Iran returning to the negotiations, though it has to be said that the outcome was not automatic. If the hardline candidate, Saeed Jalili, had won the election, he certainly would not have resumed negotiations or agreed to the JPOA—something he opposed as Iran’s nuclear negotiator and as a presidential candidate. Whether more is better would seem to depend very much on context. Should Iran fail to comply with its obligations under the JPOA or clearly put off indefinitely reaching a final settlement, additional sanctions might be useful, but imposing them in the middle of a negotiation and confidence-building phase does not, on its face, appear to be the right time to do so.
Opponents maintain that new sanctions legislation bolsters the position of the Iranian hardliners who oppose Rouhani, allowing them to repeat their claims that the United States cannot be trusted, that Washington is interested in regime change not a nuclear agreement, and that Rouhani is a patsy who has naively sold out Iranian interests. A weakened Rouhani will find it more difficult to negotiate and deliver a nuclear agreement; and his domestic agenda for reform would also likely suffer. This is one reason groups and individuals who support human rights in Iran, including exiled Iranians, have come out against the new sanctions at this time.
Counter-claim: Supporters of additional sanctions have not yet addressed this claim. Conceivably, they could try to argue that Rouhani does not matter, that only the Supreme Leader counts, or alternatively, that Rouhani is not serious about either his foreign policy goals or his domestic agenda.
Assessment: Opponents are correct in suggesting that domestic politics and factions in Iran matter, as was clearly demonstrated (yet again) in the last presidential election. It is very difficult to imagine that the sanctions bill would do anything but undermine Rouhani, as he attempts to steer Iran on a different path. This is an assessment shared not only by Iran experts, and Iranian expats who have opposed the regime, but also by Israeli military intelligence, which has concluded that Rouhani may represent a fundamental shift in Iranian politics.12
Critics of additional sanctions argue that a new sanctions bill now would have the opposite effect than it intends, that is, it will undercut the international sanctions regime and reduce pressure on Iran. According to this view, unilaterally imposed sanctions by the U.S. Congress in contravention to the JPOA will cause the negotiations to collapse, and the United States will be blamed for the result. This is in part due to the fact that the negotiating partners within the P5+1 including the US, agreed in JPOA that new sanctions applied during the negotiating period would be in direct violation of the agreement. As a consequence, support for the U.S. position will decline, and countries will use this opportunity to defect from the international sanctions regime, thus reducing the incentive for Iran to accept new limits on its nuclear program.
Counter-claim: To date, supporters of additional sanctions have not offered a direct answer to this claim, but one would imagine that the a new sanctions bill’s proponents would argue that Iran will not walk away from the negotiations (See Claim #1 above) or that at least with respect to the financial sanctions, the United States has the power to deter foreign banks from doing business with Iran.
Assessment: If the talks fall apart, and if the United States is blamed, then critics of new sanctions would appear to have a strong argument, but those outcomes represent probabilities not certainties. Even if this scenario were to take place, some countries would continue to honor some sanctions. Still, it would seem that on balance, the net result would be less pressure on Iran. Interestingly, many of the proponents of new sanctions are also critics of the JPOA, and they argue that the JPOA itself runs the risk of having sanctions unravel. If their logic is true, then it would bolster the position of this claim against additional sanctions, insofar as it suggests that the sanctions regime is fragile and that countries are just waiting for an excuse to do business with Iran. Under those conditions, new sanctions would seem to provide the very excuse the sanctions busters seek. In any case, additional sanctions now would threaten the entire JPOA agreement.
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