Maziar Motamedi
Tehran, Iran –
Donald Trump’s second term as president of the United States promises Iran a
rocky road that could lead to different outcomes when it comes to its relations
with the West, analysts say.
US leaders,
along with Israelis, have been openly discussing military strikes on top
Iranian nuclear facilities and critical infrastructure like power plants and
oil and petrochemical facilities.
Iran’s leaders,
including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, remain defiant, and its
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have held large-scale military
exercises, predominantly focusing on defending sensitive sites.
A shift, but to
where?
For more than
two decades, Iran’s relationship with the West has largely been defined by
developments in the country’s nuclear programme and efforts to stop it from
getting a bomb. Tehran has consistently maintained that it does not seek a
weapon of mass destruction.
Recently, top
political and military authorities in Iran have been discussing the possibility
of shifting Tehran’s officially stated policy of not pursuing a nuclear weapon
amid rising security threats.
There seem to be
two schools of thought in Tehran: one appears open to the possibility of
engaging the US, including on the nuclear programme, and another is vocal about
pursuing a weapon, especially given the erosion of deterrence against Israel
and setbacks to its regional allies, Naysan Rafati, senior Iran analyst at the
Washington-based Crisis Group, pointed out.
“But if the
former camp prevails, it will still require willingness in Washington to engage
Tehran – and given the Islamic republic’s vulnerabilities, there will likely be
some inclination to press the regime harder rather than entertain concessions
to it.”
Iran has lost
one of the tenets of its forward defence strategy with the fall of Bashar
al-Assad in Syria and the blows dealt to its “axis of resistance” across the
region.
The country is
also labouring under extensive sanctions that are negatively affecting its
already embattled economy, plummeting national currency and high inflation,
along with an energy crisis.
Amid dire
economic conditions, the government of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian,
which is expected to send its diplomats to Europe later this month for talks
with the E3 – France, Germany and the United Kingdom – looks like it wants to
further engage with the West.
The overall
framework being discussed appears similar to the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive
Plan of Action), Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers in 2015 – lifting some
economic pressure on Iran in exchange for curbs on its nuclear programme.
But no new
framework has taken shape yet, and any talks so far appear to have been
consultations aimed at clarifying viewpoints.
Appetite for a
new agreement
Things are
different this time, compared with when Iran and the West negotiated for years
in the leadup to the nuclear deal.
In 2018, Trump
reneged on the JCPOA and imposed harsh sanctions against Iran. He also ordered
the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s top general and a main architect
of its regional axis, five years ago.
“Unlike the
first Trump administration, the Europeans are going to be much more aligned to
whatever policy the US chooses because the Europeans have in some ways endorsed
the maximum pressure campaign themselves in recent years because of the growing
tensions they have with Tehran,” Ellie Geranmayeh, deputy head of the Middle
East and North Africa programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations
said.
This year should
see major developments that will better clarify the direction of Iran’s nuclear
programme, Abas Aslani, senior research fellow at the Center for Middle East
Strategic Studies, told Al Jazeera.
Several of the
JCPOA’s clauses have expired, Aslani said, so there is an increased willingness
to negotiate a new understanding – especially since a main sunset clause of the
JCPOA, which allows the West to reinstate any lifted United Nations sanctions on
Iran (the snapback), will expire in October 2025.
Geranmayeh said
the E3 is keeping snapback as the last tool they have to leverage Iran and they
are aware that once it is used, it can set off a “very unpredictable chain of
escalatory events”.
As such, Europe
will be spending the time left until October to prevent escalation and push for
diplomacy.
However, there
remains a major question mark over how Europeans respond if Trump demands an
immediate snapback of sanctions on Iran by the E3 in exchange for tradeoffs on
transatlantic issues dealing with European security, the expert said.
“We will either
move toward significantly higher tensions or some sort of, albeit limited,
agreement over the nuclear programme, depending on whether Iran and the US can
reach some sort of understanding,” Aslani said.
There is also a
possibility Tehran and Washington may sit down for direct negotiations,
something Iran has refused to do due to the US’s unilateral withdrawal from the
JCPOA.
“If the Trump
administration tries to push too hard to get concessions, then it’s going to be
exceedingly difficult to reach an agreement even if there’s a broader
understanding,” he said.
Iran’s nuclear
programme
The latest
information indicates Iran has not started building a bomb yet.
However, a year
after Trump left the JCPOA, it began increasing its level of enrichment and
number of centrifuges, repeating the process after Israeli attacks on its
nuclear facilities and international censure.
In recent
months, it has installed thousands of new centrifuges in reaction to the
passing of another Western-introduced censure resolution against it at the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board.
It is now
enriching uranium up to 60 percent, a relatively short technical step away from
the more than 90 percent required for a bomb, with the IAEA reporting Tehran
has enough fissile material for multiple bombs.
The increased
nuclear activity gives Iran some leverage when it comes to talking to Trump,
but it also comes with considerable risks, said the Crisis Group’s Rafati.
“Tehran is
enriching at near weapons-grade and with virtually zero breakout time, which
blurs the line between a situation that is concerning and alarming enough for
the US and/or Israel to consider military action,” he told Al Jazeera.
Nuclear breakout
time is the time required to produce enough fissile material for a bomb. If it
decides to go for a bomb, Iran would have to design and assemble a weapon,
integrate it with a long-range missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead,
and successfully test it.
We are in a
short-term holding pattern as the “big elephant in the room” of Trump taking
power is days away and there is still no clear idea how his administration
plans to shape its ties with Iran, according to senior analyst Geranmayeh.
“I think in the
first few weeks of 2025, Iran is unlikely to significantly escalate its nuclear
activities unless President Trump aggressively doubles down on the maximum
pressure campaign,” Geranmayeh told Al Jazeera.
She added that
Iranian nuclear activity may slightly cool if the US prioritises diplomatic
talks aimed at de-escalation, meaning two very different scenarios could unfold
ahead depending on where Trump positions himself.
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