In an interview with CBS News, President Biden rightly rejected Iran’s demand that the U.S. first remove all sanctions imposed on it, in return for Iran’s restored compliance with the 2015 JCPOA nuclear accord.
In the interview, which will air just before the Super Bowl on Sunday evening, Biden was asked by Norah O’Donnell, “Will the U.S. lift sanctions first in order to get Iran back to the negotiating table?” The president responded, “No.” O’Donnell followed up, “They have to stop enriching uranium, first?” Biden nodded in affirmation.
Biden deserves credit for his simple clarity, a “no,” and a nod. It matters for two reasons.
First, because Iran has spent the last two weeks pressuring the Biden administration to remove sanctions in return for its returned JCPOA compliance. While President Hassan Rouhani and foreign minister Javad Zarif have used slightly more flexible language here, Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei has adopted a distinctly hawkish tone. In a speech this weekend and on Twitter, Khamenei warned Iran would not return to compliance until the United States removed all sanctions. In a thinly-veiled warning to Rouhani and Zarif on his Farsi-language account, Khamenei also pledged that “no one in the Islamic Republic will backtrack on” his pledge. Khamenei, at once an absolute hardliner and ultimate master of Iran’s foreign and security policy, must be dissuaded from his current confidence. Khamenei must understand that he will not be able to set the terms of a restored nuclear agreement. Absent that understanding, the Biden administration will have no chance of accomplishing its nonproliferation objectives.
Biden’s clear position statement also positively recognizes the strong U.S. negotiating position.
As we editorialized earlier this week, the Trump administration bequeathed to Biden a very significant economic leverage over Iran. To squander this leverage without first extracting significant, sustained — and verifiable — Iranian concessions would be idiotic. Iran’s present uranium enrichment activity is deeply concerning and raises the potential that Iran might rush toward developing a highly-enriched nuclear weapons stockpile. But it the U.S., not Iran, which has the leverage.
Iran’s economy is in absolute chaos, with its export markets now near nonexistent and its capital reserves all but evaporated. This economic reality has seriously diluted Iran’s ability to support its patronage and proxy networks across the Middle East, indirectly supporting improved U.S. security interests and effective deterrence (Tehran knows it is currently in no position to fight). The U.S. must reinforce these understandings or risk fueling Iranian considerations to the contrary, including the Revolutionary Guard Corps’ interest in major terrorist attacks on U.S. soil.
There’s another point to note. Iran’s perception of a U.S. appeasement strategy would also undermine Washington’s credibility in the eyes of its regional allies. If Biden is to avoid a nuclear arms race between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and simultaneously deter Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, he must play negotiating hardball and keep options on the table.
This is not to say that the Biden administration’s Iran policy is perfect. In return for U.S. sanctions relief, the administration should also be demanding that Iran accept new restrictions on its ballistic missile activity and improvements to the 2015 agreement’s inspection protocols. Iran’s ballistic missile program is singularly designed to give the Islamic Republic means of launching a nuclear first strike. We also now know that Iran has continued to conduct nuclear weapons research since 2015.
Still, Biden’s words on Sunday were a step in the right direction.
