US-Iran Nuclear Negotiations: Time for a paradigm shift

Dr. Trita Parsi is the Founder and President of the National Iranian American Council. He is also the 2010 recipient of the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order and author of two award-winning books on Iran. Parsi was born in Iran but moved with his family at the age of four to Sweden to escape political repression. His father was an outspoken academic and non-Muslim who was jailed by the Shah and then by the Ayatollah. He moved to the United States as an adult and studied foreign policy at Johns Hopkins’ School for Advanced International Studies where he received his Ph.D. He is a frequent guest on CNN, the PBS Newshour with Jim Lehrer, NPR, the BBC, and Al Jazeera. He currently teaches at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.

The US-Iran relationship has seemed to soften since Hassan Rouhani became president. How will his policies affect Iran, US, and the Middle East?

[Rouhani] was the national security advisor who very much favored diplomacy, led negotiations, and signed a deal with Europeans. And [Javad Zarif] was Iran’s top, probably best diplomat in generations, was respected worldwide, and also had been at the forefront of these negotiations. This is a very different team—not just in their behaviors but also in their thinking and world views—from Ahmadinejad’s team.

Everyone got lucky because even the White House had realized the crisis was moving towards a confrontation that neither side wanted. Rouhani’s ascendance immediately led to a major uptick in negotiations. The secret channel between Iran and the US suddenly became really valuable and really substantive. Obviously there is not a final deal yet, but so much that has changed between the two countries. [Iranian Foreign Minister, Javad] Zarif and [US Secretary of State, John] Kerry e-mail each other and they just took a walk together in Geneva last month.

With the US Congress calling for more sanctions and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei seemingly skeptical of a deal, how will domestic politics affect these negotiations?

Actually, Khamenei is very supportive of diplomacy, but he has red lines that are potentially very problematic. He has had an approach of supporting diplomacy while expressing his skepticism about the US and about American intentions, but he is supporting the process. That is very important because imagine if Khamenei was taking the same position as the US Congress has done—which, frankly, has been highly unsupportive—that would have weakened Rouhani’s negotiating position. That scenario has happened now in the sense that Congress, while thinking that they are strengthening Obama’s position, has actually weakened him. The critical bargaining chip the US has in the negotiations is the lifting of sanctions, but the sanctions are not Obama’s to lift—only Congress can lift them.

In fact, I think that is part of reason there isn’t already a deal. The Iranians are very nervous about taking first steps and then when it is the United States’ turn to reduce sanctions, Congress doesn’t deliver and embarrasses the Iranians. Once the Iranians have closed down certain parts of nuclear program, even if the US doesn’t deliver, it would be very costly for them to restart it. So both sides want to have confidence that the other side is serious and capable. I think the Iranians are by now very convinced that Obama is really dedicated. They know he wants a deal, but when it comes to his ability to work things out with Congress, everyone has doubts, not just the Iranians.

The deadline for the negotiations to be completed has already been extended seven months after the parties failed to reach an accord last November. Will they be able to reach an agreement this time?

I certainly hope so. I think the cost to both sides if they fail is going to be immense. We’ve said for very long time that this problem is of such severity that either you resolve it diplomatically or have a military confrontation. That is the line that the President is using today as well, saying that the two countries would be back on the path to war if an accord can’t be reached. There is a greater acceptance that that is the choice the two sides have, which I think ensures that both sides will do their absolute utmost towards getting it. But at the same time it is a tricky negotiation. Both sides have worked hard to build up their leverage. They are very afraid of giving it up too easily, but this is what diplomacy is about—your ability to have the courage to give that up for something better.

It is not easy, but all of the major diplomatic breakthroughs and deals that we read about in the history books involved big leaders having the courage to take that step.

What is each side looking for? What do you think are sticking points in the negotiations?

The White House wants to make sure that the breakout time is no less than one year—meaning that if Iran tried to cheat, it would still take them a full year to get the bomb. That gives the international community a lot of time to react, and probably requires a reduction in centrifuges. At the same time, the US doesn’t want to give up the sanctions too early. On the Iranian side, they don’t want to go down in centrifuge numbers and they also want all the sanctions lifted as early as possible.

I think it is unrealistic for the US to expect the Iranians to dramatically reduce the number of centrifuges and not get sanctions relief until much later. At the same time, it is very unrealistic for the Iranian side to think that they can keep their centrifuges and also enjoy fast and widespread sanctions relief.

If the US is willing to reduce sanctions earlier, I think you can get a lower centrifuge number. But they are closely interconnected. The Iranians are not going to accept being in a situation in which they go down to 4,000 centrifuges and the sanctions are still there. Objectively, it is very difficult for the president to lift the sanctions. The European Union doesn’t want to lift its own sanctions first. And the UN sanctions, which make up the third component, are doctrinally linked to other security situations around the world and cannot be lifted easily. So, what are you going to lift? If you can’t lift anything, you cannot expect to get much. And similarly, if the Iranians are saying we want to keep these centrifuges, then they cannot expect any sanctions relief either.

There is a deeper problem that explains why the US doesn’t want to lift sanctions. They want to make sure that the Iranians don’t start to cheat in year two or three, so they want to keep some leverage to make sure that the other side continues to play ball. And the reason why Iranians want to keep some centrifuges is because if they give up all the centrifuge then the risk of Iran building a nuclear weapon is gone, but it also means that the attention of the West is gone, along with the urgency for the West to lift sanctions.

But there is a profound error here: both sides think that the other side will only act in favor of the deal if they are under pressure. There is no space in this paradigm to consider that the incentives of the other side can change. In my view, the real leverage the United States has is that they can help bring Iran back into the community of nations. That is powerful, positive leverage.

There are already so many sanctions that sanctions don’t really scare them anymore. Similarly, the real leverage that the Iranians have is that the Iranians can actually help the US in the region against ISIS and either be a positive player, or, at a minimum, be a neutral player. You don’t want the Iranians to become unhelpful, and now they are actually very helpful in Iraq. That’s much more powerful leverage for the Iranians than keeping a thousand more centrifuges. But the paradigm that the two sides are operating in is one in which leverage is only seen and recognized when it is a negative pressure rather than a positive incentive. That paradigm has to change for a deal to be found.

By the numbers, the impact of US sanctions on Iranian society and economy appears to be devastating. Do you think it is fair for the US to have such heavy sanctions on Iran, given that they punish civilians who cannot change policy?

I know the administration and many people in Washington felt that these sanctions were necessary. I don’t think they were and I think we had a breakthrough because the two sides realized that the pressure path would lead to a war that nobody wanted. Both sides also made a major compromise: The Iranians accepted that they would have to be much more transparent and give real guarantees that they are not building a bomb and the US dropped a long-standing American demand that Iran should have no centrifuges. Suddenly, there was space of commonality in which they could negotiate. This could have been done 10 years ago.

I think something the President recently said about the sanctions on Cuba is applicable to Iran. Not only did he say we can’t just continue the same policy for five decades and expect a different result, he also pointed out that imposing sanctions that destroys society and turns these countries into failed states does not increase American security. The biggest problems we have in Middle East now are failed states. If the sanctions destroy society altogether, American security would be worse.

The sanctions regime is putting a tremendous amount of pressure on the population—much more so than the government. The President is quite aware of that and he wants to avoid making this a permanent reality. If the sanctions are lifted soon, then hopefully this would be an episode that Iranian people will forget about and there will be happiness about a rekindled relationship with the United States. If [sanctions] go on for another couple of decades, it is going to destroy the soft power that the US has over Iran, because the people there, in spite of all this, remain one of the most positively inclined populations in the Middle East towards the US. That should not be ceded by war or by sanctions that punish people.

Feature Photo: cc/(Foro Nuclear)