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ABSTRACT
When Iran and the world powers resumed negotiations over Tehran’s controversial nuclear program after a seven-year lull, Iran’s hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was approaching the end of his second and last term. During that time, little progress was made. After the election of the moderate Hassan Rouhani to the presidency, the talks resumed decisively. Rouhani and his team were in an ideal position to strike a deal, as they were afforded cross-party support supplying them with political will and political capital. To succeed, they had to pursue several goals, including sanctions relief and reintegrating their country into the international community, while ensuring that the nuclear program remained viable within the limits they had to respect. They also had to balance several audiences in Iran and the broader international scene. They operated within the “red lines” developed to reassure various factions within the regime and populace and formalized by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. These priorities and limitations shaped the form, substance, and language of the resulting document, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action completed and signed on July 14, 2015, in Vienna.
KEYWORDS:
Notes
1 Jordan Fabian, “Obama: Sanctions Were Only Way to Bring Iran to Table,” The Hill, August 10, 2015, <http://thehill.com/policy/international/250723-obama-sanctions-were-only-way-to-bring-iran-to-table>; David E. Sanger, “C.I.A. Director Says Iran’s Economic Peril Helped Drive Nuclear Deal,” New York Times, April 8, 2015, <www.nytimes.com/2015/04/09/world/middleeast/cia-director-says-irans-economic-peril-helped-drive-nuclear-deal.html>.
2 Jason Seher, “Ex-National Security Adviser: ‘Direct Line’ between Iran Sanctions and Rouhani’s Election,” CNN, December 1, 2013, <http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/author/jhseher/page/11/>.
3 Hossein Mousavian, “It Was Not Sanctions that Brought Iran to the Table,” Financial Times, November 19, 2013, <www.ft.com/content/8d9631f4-510c-11e3-b499-00144feabdc0>; Trita Parsi, “No, Sanctions Didn’t Force Iran to Make a Deal,” Foreign Policy, May 14, 2014, <http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/05/14/no-sanctions-didnt-force-iran-to-make-a-deal/>.
4 Alireza Nader, “Influencing Iran’s Decisions on the Nuclear Program,” in Etel Solingen, ed., Sanctions, Statecraft, and Nuclear Proliferation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 222–23.
5 Author interview with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, Vienna, May 14, 2014.
6 Author interviews in Iran, 2009–14; author interviews with Iranian officials, Iran, Vienna, Lausanne, New York, 2014–16.
7 Nader, “Influencing Iran’s Decisions on the Nuclear Program,” p. 213.
8 Author interview with the founder and first director of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Akbar Etemad, telephone, June 10, 2014.
9 IAEA, INFCIRC/737, November 26, 2004.
10 Nader, “Influencing Iran’s Decisions on the Nuclear Program,” p. 220.
11 Trita Parsi, A Single Roll of the Dice: Obama’s Diplomacy with Iran, (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2012), p. 12.
12 Seyyed Hossein Mousavian, The Iranian Nuclear Crisis: A Memoir (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2012), pp. 313–14.
13 Author interview with senior Iranian official, Vienna, May 14, 2014.
14 Julian Borger, “Barack Obama: Administration Willing to Talk to Iran ‘Without Preconditions,’” The Guardian, January 21, 2009; “Videotaped Remarks by the President in Celebration of Nowruz,” White House, March 20, 2009, <www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/videotaped-remarks-president-celebration-nowruz>.
15 Indira Lakshmanan, “If You Can’t Do This Deal … Go Back to Tehran,” Politico, September 26, 2015, <www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/09/iran-deal-inside-story-213187>.
16 Ibid.
17 Author interviews with Iranian officials, Vienna, Lausanne, Geneva, 2014–16.
18 Author interviews with European and US officials, Brussels, Vienna, Washington, DC, 2014–16.
19 Ibid.
20 Daniel L. Byman and Kenneth M. Pollack, “Let Us Now Praise Great Men: Bringing the Statesman Back in,” International Security, Vol. 25, No. 4 (2001), p. 108.
21 Robert D. Putnam, “Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games,” International Organization, Vol. 42, No. 3 (1988), p. 434.
22 Kenneth Pollack, Unthinkable: Iran, the Bomb, and American Strategy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012), p. 5.
23 Allison’s description of the US political landscape can be found in Graham Allison, “Conceptual Models and the Cuban Missile Crisis,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 63, No. 3 (1969), p. 698.
24 Putnam, “Diplomacy and Domestic Politics,” p. 434.
25 Ibid., pp. 436–38.
26 Jason Rezaian and Anne Gearan, “Iran’s Foreign Ministry Takes over Nuclear Negotiations, in Sharp Break with Past,” Washington Post, September 5, 2013.
27 Javad Zarif, interview with ABC This Week, September 29, 2013; Hassan Rouhani, “Iran President Hasan Rouhani on Holocaust: ‘I Condemn the Massacre’ but It’s Time to ‘Separate’ It from Israel’s Treatment of Palestinians,” CBS This Morning, September 26, 2013, <www.cbsnews.com/news/iran-president-hasan-rouhani-on-holocaust-i-condemn-the-massacre-but-its-time-to-separate-it-from-israels-treatment-of-palestinians/>; Hassan Rouhani, “Iranian President: Holocaust Is ‘Condemnable,’” CNN Amanpour, September 25, 2013, <www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCF0_GrvIYM>.
28 Javad Zarif, “Mohammad Javad Zarif: Iran Is Committed to a Peaceful Nuclear Program,” Washington Post, June 13, 3014; Javad Zarif, “Mohammad Javad Zarif: A Message from Iran,” New York Times, April 20, 2015; Javad Zarif, “Mohammad Javad Zarif: Saudi Arabia’s Reckless Extremism,” New York Times, January 10, 2016; Javad Zarif, “Zarif: Why Iran Is Building up Its Defenses,” Washington Post, April 20, 2016.
29 Jason Rezaian and Anne Gearan, “Iran’s Foreign Ministry Takes over Nuclear Negotiations, in Sharp Break with Past.”
30 Cotton invited Javad Zarif to “debate the Constitution” and “Iran’s record of tyranny, treachery, & terror,” noting he would understand if he declined this invitation, as “after all, in [his] 20s, [Zarif] hid in US during Iran–Iraq war while peasants & kids were marched to die.” Zarif responded, “Serious diplomacy, not macho personal smear, is what we need,” and congratulated Cotton on his newborn son. Nick Grass, “Iran’s Zarif Fired Back at Tom Cotton’s Tweets,” Politico, April 30, 2015, <www.politico.com/story/2015/04/irans-zarif-fires-back-at-tom-cottons-tweets-117510>.
31 “Letter from Senate Republicans to Leaders of Iran,” New York Times, March 9, 2015, <www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/03/09/world/middleeast/document-the-letter-senate-republicans-addressed-to-the-leaders-of-iran.html>.
32 Ali Khamenei, “Tehran’s Friday Prayer Preach,” Khamenei.ir, June 19, 2009, <http://farsi.khamenei.ir/speech-content?id=7190>.
33 IAEA, “Final Assessment on Past and Present Outstanding Issues Regarding Iran’s Nuclear Programme,” December 2, 2015, GOV/2015/68.
34 United States Institute of Peace (USIP), “Iran’s Economy, by the Numbers,” Iran Primer, May 2015, <http://iranprimer.usip.org/blog/2015/may/11/irans-economy-numbers>.
35 Author interviews, Iran, June 2014. See also Ali Akbari-Mazdabadi, Hajj Qassem: A Quest in Hajj Qassem Soleimani’s Memoirs (Tehran: Ya Zahra, 2015), p. 161.
36 Reformists Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Seyyed Mohammad Khatami held the presidency in 1989–97 and 1997–2005, respectively.
37 Akbari-Mazdabadi, Hajj Qassem, pp. 217, 221.
38 Author interviews, Iran, June 2014.
39 Author interview with Iranian official, telephone, July 25, 2016.
40 US Department of State, “Iran Sanctions,” <www.state.gov/e/eb/tfs/spi/iran/index.htm>.
41 UNSC Resolution 1696 (2006), SC/8792, <www.un.org/press/en/2006/sc8792.doc.htm>.
42 UNSC Resolution 1737 (2006), SC/8928, <www.un.org/press/en/2006/sc8928.doc.htm>; UNSC Resolution 1747 (2007), S/RES/1747, <https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N07/281/40/PDF/N0728140.pdf?OpenElement>; UNSC Resolution 1803 (2008), S/RES/1803, <www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/unsc_res1803-2008.pdf>; UNSC Resolution 1835 (2008), SC/9459, <www.un.org/press/en/2008/sc9459.doc.htm>; UNSC Resolution 1929 (2010), S/RES/1929, <www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/unsc_res1929-2010.pdf>.
43 USIP, “Iran’s Economy, by the Numbers.”
44 Today, sanctions against Iran stem from several key areas of concern for the United States and its partners: the Islamic Republic’s human-rights violations, regional activities and support for terrorist groups, such as Hezbollah, ballistic-missile program, and nuclear-related sanctions. It was the latter that Iran wanted “terminated,” as Zarif put it. Author interviews with Javad Zarif, New York, Vienna, Lausanne, Geneva, 2014–16.
45 Author interview with former US official, email, June 23, 2017.
46 Author interview with Iranian official, telephone, July 25, 2016.
47 Author interviews with EU, US, and Iranian officials, Vienna, Lausanne, Geneva, 2014–16.
48 “Untolds from the Head of Counter-Intelligence at Parchin,” Farda News, January 23, 2013.
49 Hassan Rouhani, National Security and Nuclear Diplomacy (Tehran: Center for Strategic Research, 2011), p. 27.
50 Author interview with Mohsen Kadivar (who has compiled the fatwas and statements of Shia clerics on the bomb in Iran), telephone, February 18, 2014.
51 Author interview with Mohsen Kadivar, telephone, February 18, 2014.
52 Established in 1973, Eurodif was a joint venture by five nations: Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, and Iran. It aimed to establish a uranium enrichment facility in the only NPT nuclear weapon state in the group, France (which would help alleviate concerns of possible noncompliance and diversion of nuclear material for military use). France would enrich uranium and sell it to the rest of the partners. In 1979, Eurodif began operating, the Islamic Revolution occurred in Iran, and Tehran suspended its membership in the venture without receiving any enriched uranium from it. Tehran and France entered a lawsuit, in which Iran claimed US$1 billion and interest. It received US$1.6 billion in 1991. See Oliver Meier, “Iran and Foreign Enrichment: A Troubled Model,” Arms Control Today, January 1, 2006, <www.armscontrol.org/act/2006_01-02/JANFEB-IranEnrich>.
53 Ibid.
54 Author interview with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, New York, September 20, 1014; also see Ariane Tabatabai, “The Audience War: The Challenges of Iran’s Nuclear Rhetoric,” RUSI, March 29, 2012, <https://rusi.org/commentary/audience-war-challenges-irans-nuclear-rhetoric>; Ariane Tabatabai, “Iran’s Evolving Nuclear Narrative,” Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center Iran Matters, February 7, 2014, <www.belfercenter.org/index.php/publication/irans-evolving-nuclear-narrative>.
55 Ali Khamenei, “Statement in Meeting with Air Force Commanders and Staff,” Khamenei.ir, February 8, 2015, <http://farsi.khamenei.ir/speech-content?id=28896>.
56 Nader, “Influencing Iran’s Decisions on the Nuclear Program,” p. 212
57 Normally, the specifics of Iran’s foreign policy are the prerogative of the government, and it is rare for the Supreme Leader to intervene as directly as he did during the talks. Author interview with senior Iranian official, Vienna, June 29, 2015.
58 Ibid.
59 Ali Khamenei, “Remarks in Officer Academy and Guard Training at Imam Hossein,” Khamenei.ir, March 20, 2015, <http://farsi.khamenei.ir/speech-content?id=29792>.
60 Author interview with senior Iranian official, Vienna, June 29, 2015.
61 Ariane Tabatabai, “Interview: Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Majid Ravanchi,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, June 30, 2015, <http://thebulletin.org/interview-iranian-deputy-foreign-minister-majid-ravanchi8437>.
62 Author interview with senior Iranian official, Vienna, June 29, 2015.
63 Author interviews with European, US, and Iranian officials, Brussels, London, Vienna, Lausanne, Geneva, Washington, DC, and New York, 2014–16.
64 Ali Khamenei, “Statement in Meeting with Regime Officials,” Khamenei.ir, July, 7, 2014, <http://farsi.khamenei.ir/speech-content?id=26908>.
65 Author interview with senior Iranian official, Vienna, May 14, 2014.
66 Author interviews in Iran, June 2014.
67 Khamenei, “Statement in Meeting with Regime Officials.” First-generation centrifuges’ per unit per year efficiency is estimated to be 0.9, but the centrifuges have been operating at a lower level. See Mark Hibbs, “Iran’s Centrifuges and Bushehr,” Arms Control Wonk, March 14, 2014, <www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/1102616/irans-centrifuges-and-bushehr/>.
68 Thomas Erdbrink, “Iran’s Supreme Leader Is Skeptical of Nuclear Talks with U.S.,” New York Times, January 7, 2015, <www.nytimes.com/2015/01/08/world/middleeast/irans-supreme-leader-is-skeptical-of-nuclear-talks-with-us.html>.
69 Ray Takeyh, “Iran Poised to Choose Poverty over Nuclear Dismantlement,” Washington Post, October 31, 2014, <www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ray-takeyh-iran-poised-to-choose-poverty-over-nuclear-disarmament/2014/10/31/695cea2c-5fb5-11e4-91f7-5d89b5e8c251_story.html>.
70 Tabatabai, “Interview: Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Majid Ravanchi.”
71 Author interview with senior Iranian official, Vienna, June 29, 2015.
72 Ibid.
73 Author interviews with European, US, and Iranian officials, Brussels, London, Vienna, Lausanne, Geneva, Washington, DC, and New York, 2014–16.
74 Author interview with Javad Zarif, Vienna, November 19, 2014.
75 Author interviews with European, US, and Iranian officials, Brussels, Vienna, Lausanne, Geneva, Washington, DC, and New York, 2014–16.
76 Barbara Starr, “Initial Navy Report Finds Sailors Captured by Iran Made Several Errors,” CNN, March 1, 2016, <www.cnn.com/2016/03/01/politics/report-sailors-captured-by-iran/>.
77 Ali Khamenei, “Statement in Meeting with Air Force Commanders and Staff,” Khamenei.ir, February 8, 2015, <http://farsi.khamenei.ir/speech-content?id=28896>.
78 Author interview with senior Iranian official, Vienna, May 14, 2014.
79 Ibid., June 29, 2015.
80 Author interview with former Iranian representative to the IAEA, Aliasghar Soltanieh, Tehran, June 9, 2015.
81 Author interview with senior Iranian official, Vienna, June 29, 2015.
82 The Procurement Working Group of the Joint Commission, “Information on the Procurement Channel,” <www.un.org/en/sc/2231/pdf/160113-Information-on-the-procurement-channel.pdf>.
83 Hamid Rasaee, “Rasaee: The Procurement Channel Is One of the Biggest Issues of the JCPOA,” Nazar News, September, 15, 2015, <http://nazarnews.com/71021>.