Illustrative Image: Iranian Revolutionary Guards members march during a parade ceremony
The measure aims only to serve American interests, without any benefit to global peace.
Written by Lucas Leiroz, researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.
Tensions remain high between the US and Iran. Recently, the US government announced that it is willing to remove some of the sanctions that are currently being imposed on Tehran, but the news has not been well received by the Persian country. The reason is that the relief only addresses the very American interests. Washington plans simply to end sanctions that do not conform to the terms of the Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), with no real effort on the part of the US to improve bilateral relations and ease tensions.
On December 14, the US government declared a green light to ease or end some sanctions against Iran that are not in accordance with the terms of the JCPOA (international agreement established in 2015 providing for Iran’s production of enriched uranium to decrease in return of sanctions’ removal by the West). Commenting on the case, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, US ambassador to the United Nations, stated that the measure “would allow Iran to receive the economic benefits of the deal”.
However, Tehran did not show any contentment with the mere possibility of a partial suspension of sanctions, having demanded a deeper attitude on the part of Washington. Iran’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Majid Takht Ravanchi, emphasized that the US must immediately ban all sanctions against Iran, as well as pledge not to withdraw again from any of the international agreements in which both countries are involved.
Indeed, there is something understandable about Iran’s negative response to the US measure. The 2015 agreement was extremely celebrated by the entire international community as it managed to establish reasonably fair conditions to align Western and Iranian interests. In fact, Iran struggled to comply with the terms of the agreement, which was not complemented by the US. Washington unilaterally withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018, during the Trump administration. The US return to the agreement began to be supported by Biden and the Democrats as a way to improve the US international image – which had been severely damaged by Trump’s peculiarities – but apparently such a return is permeated with a truly dishonest attitude: the selection of sanctions that violate the agreement.
Obviously, all current US sanctions violate the JCPOA. It is not a matter of having “fair” sanctions and “illegal” sanctions. All the measures that the US has taken against Iran in recent years go against the JCPOA’s objective, as the American withdrawal from the agreement was followed by the infamous “maximum pressure” campaign, which ruined the Iranian economic structure, harming the entire society of the Persian country, despite Tehran’s efforts to comply with the terms of the agreement. In this sense, any selection of sanctions seems wrong, unfair, and insufficient to restore the balance in the relations between the US and Iran, as in all current measures there are terms that directly violate the JCPOA.
This “selection” that the White House plans is very simple to understand. Washington will ban only those sanctions that have been nominally credited to the nuclear issue, which is the subject of the JCPOA agreement. But there is no justice in this kind of attitude, as it is just a legalistic formalism totally devoid of material substance. After the beginning of the maximum pressure campaign, the US began to punish Iran for several reasons, not just considering the nuclear issue. Teheran has received sanctions for its missiles, alleged “human rights violations” and even alleged “support for terrorism”, in addition to several other unsubstantiated accusations typical of American international praxis in recent years. In practice, only nuclear matter sanctions would be selected, but most of the coercive measures would remain intact, which is absolutely unfair. In addition, considering that the establishment of the very maximum pressure campaign is a consequence of the nuclear issue, it is evident that all sanctions affront the JCPOA and, therefore, must be immediately eliminated.
The attitude to be expected from Iran from now on is one of increasing distance from the West. The partial removal of sanctions will not be enough to re-establish a fair dialogue between Tehran and the Washington and, consequently, tensions are likely to continue for a long time. Since the American exit from the JCPOA, Iran has been delaying in fulfilling the terms of the agreement. The country has pledged to eliminate around 98% of its enriched uranium reserves and is still on time to comply with the agreement (only seven of the thirteen-year term provided for in the pact have passed). However, from 2018 until now, the country has returned to enriching uranium and may continue to do so.
In fact, Iran has self-imposed restrictions in order to never produce nuclear weapons. It is not in the plans of an Islamic theocracy to build weapons of mass destruction, which are considered sacrilegious by the state religion. The US objective is simply to banish the Persian country’s entire nuclear technology program, even for peaceful purposes. Precisely for that the JCPOA served as a pact of alignment of interests, but which can only be fully restored if the US totally abandons its coercive measures.
