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After months of uncertainty and growing concerns from the West, Iran announced in early November that negotiations over reviving the 2015 nuclear deal would resume, with a first meeting scheduled in Vienna on November 29. For the moment, the pressure has come down a notch, but the outlook for success is bleak. Irans demand that the United States remove all sanctions imposed since U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement in 2018, and its insistence that the United States provide a guarantee that a future president wont leave the deal again go well beyond the terms of the original agreement. In addition, Irans nuclear advances mean that a return to the deal is now less attractive for the United States, because Iran has gained important knowledge that cannot be easily wiped away. Under these conditions, a deal will be hard to reach. But the Biden administration needs to try, because a nuclear-armed Iran would make the world a far more dangerous place.

That, at least, is what most observers believe. Ray Takeyh disagrees. In The Bomb Will Backfire on Iran (October 18, 2021), he presents a far more sanguine view. Going nuclear, he argues, would cost the Iranian regime a great deal and fail to yield any strategic benefit. This will eventually become apparent to the people of Iran, who will then rise up against the regime, Takeyh predicts. And so, in his view, the nuclear gambit will backfire: in the end, he writes, the most consequential victim of an Iranian bomb will be the theocracy itself.

But these claims dont hold up to scrutiny. They ignore important evidence, rest on a set of questionable assumptions, and fail to take into account the lessons offered by looking at the experiences of other nuclear-armed states. In reality, an Iranian bomb isnt inevitable, and the global pressure campaign Takeyh expects to emerge in the aftermath of an Iranian nuclear test wont materialize. A nuclear Iran would pose serious challenges to the United States, and Takeyhs suggestion that such a scenario would present an opportunity to bring about regime change is risky and unwise. The better option remains trying to prevent the emergence of an Iranian bomb in the first place.

Takeyh argues that Iran has already decided to produce nuclear weapons and that it will inevitably do so. According to him, neither diplomacy nor covert action nor the threat of military force has done much to slow Irans march toward the bomb, much less stop it. Irans suspicions of the United States and its ambitions for regional dominance mean that it cannot simply stop at the threshold of acquiring the bomb. It has to go all the way.

It is impossible to rule out that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Irans supreme leader, already has his heart set on building the bomb. But instead of trying to perform the impossible task of peering into the minds of Irans leaders, it is better to examine the available evidence. And here, information suggests that Iran has not resolved to produce nuclear weapons. Instead, Tehran wants the ability to build weapons in the future in case it decides it needs themwhat is known in nuclear parlance as a hedging strategy.

Since 2007, U.S. intelligence has repeatedly indicated that Iran wants a bomb optionnot the bomb itself. As then Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified to Congress in 2012, Iran is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons, in part by developing various nuclear capabilities that better position it to produce such weapons, should it choose to do so. Moreover, the U.S. intelligence community has said that any future Iranian decision about whether to build nuclear weapons will be based on a cost-benefit approach. In other words, contrary to Takeyhs assertion, Irans decision to weaponize is not a foregone conclusion. Indeed, Irans willingness to implement the 2015 deal it reached with the United States and other world powerswhich drastically reduced Tehrans nuclear program and its ability to quickly develop a bombis good evidence that Iran is not as committed to acquiring nuclear weapons as Takeyh suggests.

Irans leaders would need to be quite desperate to risk it all for a single nuclear weapon.

Despite its withdrawal from the nuclear agreement, even the Trump administration had to concede that Iran wasnt actively working to build weapons but was instead holding on to key documents and personnel to preserve technical expertise relevant to a nuclear weapons capability, and potentially to aid in any future effort to pursue nuclear weapons again, if a decision were made to do so. Israelwhich is laser focused on the Iranian nuclear threatapparently agrees. To the best of our knowledge, the directive [on whether to produce nuclear weapons] has not changed, a senior Israeli intelligence official said last month. They are not heading toward a bomb right now.

Intentions can change, of course. But how easy would it be for Iran to build a bomb if it decided to do so? Takeyh argues that Iran could quickly produce enough material for a device. He is certainly right about that. But he ignores the reality that unless Iran has built covert facilitiesand theres no evidence that it hasIran would be trying to break out at a site that is monitored by international inspectors, posing a high risk of detection and intervention. Kicking out international inspectors would prevent them from reporting on Irans activities but would itself be a major red flag and would signal that Iran was making a dash to the bomb. The international community might not have much time to act. But Irans margin of error would similarly be slim. Irans leaders would need to be quite desperate to risk it all for a single nuclear weapon.

Even if Iran succeeded in producing enough nuclear material, it would still have to package that material with other components into a nuclear device and potentially load it on to a missile. Takeyh ignores these steps of the process, on which Iran apparently hasnt made any progress for over a decade and which are vulnerable to detection. As the head of Israeli military intelligence said in October, there has been no progress . . . in the weapons project and that even from the moment you have a breakout, there is still a long way to go before a bomb, perhaps as much as two years. The fact that Iran hasnt made these preparations suggests that a move to nuclear weapons isnt in the offing.

But the international communitys ability to disrupt an Iranian sprint for the bomb doesnt matter if, as Takeyh argues, neither the United States nor Israel has the will to stop it. As much as these two countries focus on the Iranian nuclear program, strategic surprise is still possible. Still, it is incredibly difficult to imagine a scenario in which either the United States or Israel knowingly allows Iran to cross the nuclear threshold. Israel has ramped up training for a military strike on Irans nuclear sites. For decades, every U.S. president has pledged not to allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, and President Joe Biden recently stated that if diplomacy fails, the United States will turn to other options. A military strike to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons may be one of the few remaining foreign policy decisions that would have the support of a majority of Democrats and Republicans in Congress. Launching one would be a far easier decision than allowing Iran to cross the nuclear Rubicon.

In Takeyhs hypothetical scenario, a nuclear Iran would prompt a U.S.-led global backlash that would cut the Iranian regime off from the global economy and deny it the benefits of nuclear weapons. Realizing this, the Iranian public would become disillusioned and ultimately overthrow the regime; a new, pro-U.S. leadership would emerge in its place and dismantle Irans nuclear weapons.

In reality, things would probably play out much differently. First, a global pressure campaign against Iran would be unlikely to emerge. There would especially be little support for sanctions whose true goal was regime changea policy even most U.S. allies would reject. Although an Iranian nuclear test would be condemned across the globe and lead to a temporary spike in support for new penalties against Tehran, enthusiasm would wane in the subsequent months and years. China and Russiawhich seek to check U.S. ambitions, sell Iran military equipment, and (in Chinas case) buy Iranian oilwould likely defy any push to isolate Iran. Despite the best efforts of the United States, the result would be a leaky sanctions regime that would get leakier over time.

Takeyh is right that North Koreawhich challenges his argument because it has managed to hold on to power and its nuclear weapons despite massive pressureisnt the right comparison, because its isolation is in part by design. North Korea is also the clear historical outlier: international pressure against proliferators tends to gradually lessen once they cross the nuclear threshold. A better comparison therefore would be to the international response to Indias and Pakistans nuclear weapons tests in 1998, which triggered a public outcry and U.S. congressional sanctions. Those sanctions were gradually eased, and the international community had little appetite for imposing high economic costs given the low likelihood that New Delhi and Islamabad would disarm. Irans connection to the global economy creates vulnerabilities, but it also means that trying to squeeze the country to the point of collapse would not work.

The theory that a nuclear-armed Iran would stand idle as the United States tries to suffocate it is not one worth testing.

Although Takeyh acknowledges that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose significant challenges to the United States, he tends to assume that addressing these issues would be relatively easy and straightforward because, as he puts it, they would prompt a much-needed reset of U.S. policy that refocuses its attention on Iran and the region. In reality, the United States would face tough choices about its commitments to allies and how to balance those requirements against other significantand probably more importantsecurity threats from China and Russia. Takeyhs recommendation that Washington deploy nuclear weapons to the Gulf states is a case in point. It is questionable whether Congress or the American people would support such a move. It also probably isnt necessary given that the United States can already target Iran with nuclear weapons from halfway across the globe. And placing U.S. nuclear weapons on Irans borders could actually increase the risks that Tehran would use a nuclear weapon in a crisis because the regime might feel pressured to use them or lose them.

This leads to perhaps the most dangerous flaw in Takeyhs argument: trying to destabilize and induce the overthrow of an unsavory regime armed with nuclear weapons is flirting with disaster. The United States worries about and usually seeks to avoid political instability in nuclear states precisely because of the risk of theft, loss, or the unintended use of nuclear weapons. The theory that a nuclear-armed Iran would stand idle as the United States tries to suffocate it is not one worth testing.

Moreover, it is also unclear why the Iranian public would revolt against the attainment of a nuclear weapons capability. Even though polls show that most Iranians are opposed to weaponization today, support would probably shift following a test that many would view as a major achievement and a source of national pride. Those same polls consistently show that Iranians support their countrys nuclear program, even though it has come at a significant cost. And even if the regime were to collapse, Takeyh is too confident that it would be replaced by a pro-American leadership willing to dismantle Irans nuclear arsenal. A more hard-line faction could take controlor a set of leaders friendlier to the United States and its allies may still see value in holding on to nuclear weapons to burnish their credentials at home or to use as a bargaining chip. Trying to base an entire policy around predicting the outcome of a revolution seems misguided.

Rather than resigning itself to the inevitability of an Iranian bomb, the United States should instead focus on preventing Iran from crossing the nuclear threshold. The best way of doing that remains reaching a deal with Iran that rolls back its nuclear program under close international monitoring in exchange for sanctions relief. That is harder today given the Trump administrations withdrawal from the 2015 deal and Irans subsequent nuclear progress. But history suggests two reasons for optimism: Iran is not committed to the bomb, and its decisions on its nuclear program can be influenced. The task for Washington is to convince Iran that its interests are better served by reaching a deal than by escalating its nuclear program. To do that, the United States should keep the military option in its back pocket, stay open to a diplomatic solution, and remain flexible on alternatives to the imperiled nuclear agreement.

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A Nuclear Iran Is Not Inevitable: Why the World Cannot Give Up on Diplomacy - Foreign Affairs Magazine

Iran requires a commitment that the US will not again leave the nuclear deal signed with world powers in 2015, the countrys new chief negotiator and deputy foreign minister has told the Guardian.

Ali Bagheri Kani also said that talks in Vienna between Iran and other signatories had failed to reach agreement on a means of verifying that US sanctions had both been lifted and had a practical impact on trade with Iran.

We need verification, and this remains unresolved. It is one of the issues that remains not finalised. It is not enough for the ink to be put on the agreement, he said. Bagheri Kani did not rule out an independent body being responsible for verification.

The Vienna talks are due to recommence at the end of the month after being suspended by Iran, after the June election of a new hardline president, Ebrahim Raisi. Bagheri Kani is touring European capitals to set out the Iranian negotiating position.

Iran has said it will not take its own steps back into full compliance with the deal until verification of US actions has been secured. Iran has been increasing its uranium stockpile and use of advanced centrifuges beyond the limits set in the deal. It has limited the access of the UN nuclear inspectorate.

Defending his demand that the US give a guarantee that it will comply with the agreement, Bagheri Kani said: This is about an agreement not a policy. If there is a peace agreement between two states, it has the effect of a treaty. This is international law. It is not intended that domestic laws of the US can prevail over an international agreement. That is against international law.

He added he wanted European powers to give their own guarantees that they will trade with Iran, regardless of the US position, possibly by using a blocking statute nullifying the effect of US sanctions on European firms that trade with Iran.

Bagheri Kani denied that Iran had been stalling on the talks resumption in an effort to develop its own nuclear program, saying it was natural for a new government to take time to prepare its negotiating position and to hold bilateral talks with the other parties.

The minister repeated calls for all US sanctions linked to the nuclear deal to be lifted. Iran views sanctions that the US says were imposed for Iranian acts of terrorism or human rights abuses as linked to the nuclear deal, and therefore requiring lifting.

He also ruled out discussions on Irans missile and security program being included in the agreement. He said: the JCPOA has a clear framework and other issues are not relevant. We are not going to negotiate on our defence capabilities or our security.

He added: Irans relations with other countries did not need a guardian.

He denied his negotiating stance was so tough that it would be impossible to reach an agreement in Vienna. We are just saying that in accordance with the JCPOA the sanctions should be lifted. We did a deal, and our view is that it should be implemented.

Asked if he was requiring the Vienna talks to go back to the start, he said: What is important is not from where we started, but what is important is that we achieve a deal that has practical results for the parties. Our main objective is to remove the illegal sanctions that they have imposed on the Iranian nation in breach of UN resolutions. Any sanctions in breach of the JCPOA imposed by President Obama and President Trump have to be lifted. That is the agreement set out the JCPOA.

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Irans negotiator wants guarantee US will not leave renewed nuclear deal - The Guardian

Throughout its history, the Grumman F-14 Tomcat has been operated by exactly two nations: the United States, which retired the aircraft in 2006 in favor of the Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornet; and Iran, whichcontinues to use them.

Throughout the second half of the 1970s and the 1980s, other nations clamored for access to the new jet, but export restrictions prevented Washington from sharing it. Iran ultimately only received the jet in the early 1970s because of concerns that Iraq, which had received cutting-edge fighters from the Soviet Union, could outpace the Shahs forces in the event of a war between the two. The Shah, who had eagerly aligned himself with the West at every turn, was a reliable enough ally that the U.S. government felt it could trust him with one ofthe best fighter aircraft in the worldor, to be more precise, eightyof them.

In early 1979, as the Shahs regime fell and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini installed a revolutionary theocracy in its place, Washington had second thoughts about this decision. But by then it was too late; the newly created Islamic Republic of Iran took control of seventy-nineof the eightyplanesand began to operate them in 1980 whensure enoughSaddam Husseins Iraq invaded Iran. In the first six months of the war, the F-14s superiority quickly became apparent; it reportedly racked up at least fiftyair-to-air victories in the first six months of the war, with only one aircraft damaged in return.

Following this astonishing string of successes, Iraqi pilots changed tactics, by and large refusing to engage the F-14s, and Iranian pilots, knowing their value, likewise remained back from actual combat, using the planes advanced sensors to coordinate the movements of other, lesser aircraft. In spite of the restrictions placed on them, Iranian engineers also made several improvements to the Tomcat, includingthe addition of bomb racksto transform them from air superiority fighters to ground-attack ones.

By the end of the war, the plane had made at least two hundredkills, losing only eight to enemy action. The second part was more due to the planes lack of availability as to its supposed invincibility; because of U.S. sanctions, spare parts for the aircraft were impossible to import, meaning that they werecannibalized from other aircraft; in 1988, the number of operational aircraft had dwindled to around thirty. Today, that number is estimated to have increased to forty, though even these vary in readiness.

Trevor Filseth is a current and foreign affairs writer for theNational Interest.

Image: Flickr

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Iran's Jury-Rigged F-14s Saved the Day Against Iraq - The National Interest

Iranian President Raisi says no conditions for talks but Tehran expects the lifting of US sanctions in return.

Tehran, Iran Irans President Ebrahim Raisi said seriousness on the part of the United States in upcoming talks to restore the 2015 nuclear deal would mean lifting sanctions against Iran.

In a late-night interview aired by state television, the president said Iran is serious and committed to return at a still unspecified time to Vienna to resume result-oriented talks aimed at restoring the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

For the other side, a readiness to lift sanctions can be a sign for its seriousness, Raisi said.

Raisi also said when Enrique Mora, the European Unions top representative to the Vienna talks, travelled to Tehran last Thursday for discussions, he was told the same.

The Islamic Republic is serious in this. We must also see seriousness on the other side, Raisi said.

Irans foreign ministry said earlier this month the country has no pre-conditions for returning to the negotiating table.

Mora led a delegation that held talks with Ali Bagheri Kani, Irans new deputy foreign minister for political affairs and its top nuclear negotiator.

After the meeting, Iranian officials said the talks were positive and constructive and they would continue in Brussels within two weeks.

But as Iran says it will come back to the Austrian capital soon and is still reviewing records of six rounds of negotiations that ended in June, the US and EU continue to push Iran to commit to a return date.

On Monday, EUs Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell said, We made it clear to the Iranians that time is not on their side and its better to go back to the negotiating table quickly.

The Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said challenges and obstacles that remained after the six rounds of talks will need to be discussed with EU officials in Brussels prior to returning to Vienna.

In a tweet on Sunday, Mikhail Ulyanov, Russias top negotiator to Vienna, said talks in Brussels could be viewed as a preparatory step towards resumption of real negotiations in Vienna and not as a substitute.

The US unilaterally abandoned the JCPOA in 2018, imposing waves of sanctions that blacklisted the entire Iranian financial system as part of former US President Donald Trumps maximum pressure campaign.

In response, Iran restarted aspects of its nuclear programme and it is now more advanced than ever with uranium enrichment reaching a purity of 60 percent.

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Iran: Seriousness in nuclear talks means lifting sanctions - Al Jazeera English

For all the sanctions on Iran, Tehran has secured willing customers for its crucial oil and gas exports in the worlds leading authoritarian and communist regimes: Venezuela and China. Caracas has taken a creative route, first paying gold for oil and then bartering its own heavy crude for Iranian gas condensates. Beijing, by contrast, pays cash straight up $280 billion in 2019, followed by a deal worth $400 billion this year. Naturally, this illicit trade weakens efforts to compel Iran to moderate its destructive behavior and end its pursuit of nuclear weapons, potentially harming U.S. interests and national security.

Yet Irans success in courting Venezuela and China does not mean that U.S. sanctions have failed. Sanctions have forced the regime to trade with a few like-minded authoritarian regimes. And crucially, sanctions have forced Iran to go to extraordinary lengths to conceal its illicit shipping commerce: satellite tracking deceptions, doctoring of records, flag- and name-switching, physical camouflage, and a host of other maritime violations.

With a better understanding of the shipping subterfuge, the U.S. and its allies can make the whole rogue enterprise prohibitively costly for all parties, plugging enforcement gaps and truly squeezing Tehran.

For instance, FELICITY was the first Iranian-flagged vessel to load Venezuelan crude, according to TankerTrackers.com. It reportedly journeyed to Venezuelas Jose Anchorage using subversive and illegal techniques, including a shutdown of its tracking beacon. Before arriving in Venezuela, FELICITY was last seen via its satellite transponder 13 months prior in Taizhou Anchorage in China, according to Marine Traffic meaning that the vessel sailed all the way to Venezuela with its transponder off. Disabling the transponder is a favored tactic to obscure the movement of goods, but its also a dangerous violation of International Maritime Organization safety rules. FELICITY even turned to more rudimentary methods to hide its activities undergoing a fresh paint job in Venezuela.

Vessels moving Iranian oil carry falsified records that attest to their cargo originating in countries such as Oman, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Iraq and Malaysia. By engaging in ship-to-ship (STS) transfers of oil from Iranian-flagged vessels to tankers owned by non-Iranian firms, Iran can obscure the origin of the oil and gas, as well as the trade itself for its customers. STS transfers are often preceded by vessels spoofing their location to fake their position, sometimes by thousands of nautical miles, creating yet another dangerous situation.

Smaller and under-resourced nations are routinely duped into the illicit trade by foreign-flagged rogue vessels, such as those included in Irans Ghost Armada, our organization, United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), has found. These national flagging authorities are often unable to adequately patrol the activities of their flag-bearers, and so are targeted in order to fulfill ship registration requirements. Ships that are part of the Ghost Armada repeatedly switch flags, change names and alter their physical markings.

When advocacy groups such as ours notify maritime authorities of illicit activities of registered vessels, we find that most are eager to comply with U.S. sanctions. Some even have come to rely upon nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to serve as their eyes and ears. Through our work, dozens of vessels have been stripped of their flags, making it more difficult to continue their subterfuge.

The whole gamut of shipping deceptions perpetrated by commercial facilitators and their enablers must be made far more costly prohibitively so. As a first step, we recommend the Treasury Department broaden the scope of sanctions-triggering activities that constitute significant support to Irans shipping sector. The U.S. should punish bunkering specialists, port authorities, importing agents, management firms, charterers, operators, marine insurers, classification societies and all other maritime services providers involved with Iran. The Treasury also should expand and delineate the range of sanctionable maritime services and work to identify and target any Venezuelan or Chinese firms complicit in smuggling.

Sanctions have slowed the flow of foreign capital and reduced Irans trading partners to the worst-of-the-worst. But U.S. sanctions are only as robust as the enforcement mechanisms that come with them. Iran and its dubious allies are perpetuating a vicious cycle that undermines global compliance and further allows the Iranian regime to continue its destructive and malign behavior. A sharper focus on the specific methods and their perpetrators is needed to cut off Irans oil spigot.

Daniel Roth is the research director and Claire Jungman is the chief of staff of United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), a nonprofit, nonpartisan policy organization based in New York that was formed in 2008 to combat the threats posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran.

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Let's plug the sanctions gaps that enable Iran to sell oil to China and Venezuela | TheHill - The Hill