Although no major breakthroughs to end the current impasse between Tehran and Washington are expected in the short term, Mahsa Rouhi says that tensions could be alleviated by a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani if only to break the ice and show goodwill.
The dangerous diplomatic and military dance between Iran and the United States shows no signs of ending. As recently as two weeks ago, when world leaders met at the UN General Assembly, there had been hopes for talks between the two countries. French President Emmanuel Macron put forward a reported four-point deal to break the current impasse. Under his proposal, Iran would agree to comply with the terms of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and remain open to future nuclear negotiations and perhaps even some discussion of Iran’s regional activities, while the US would agree to sanctions relief, including on critical oil exports. Both sides agreed to the terms, but the plan fell through because Washington refused to meet Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s requirement that sanctions be lifted ahead of any meeting.
There are, of course, broader reasons for the current diplomatic frustration. Rouhani needs sanctions relief and a clear framework for negotiation up front to provide him with the political capital required to sell new talks to Iran’s religious leadership and other hardliners in the country. The US wants reasonable assurances of a deal that President Donald Trump can claim is superior to the JCPOA. In this light, middle ground seems elusive.
Tehran is hoping for a series of lower-level, mediation-style talks among technical and diplomatic officials to form a road map using the specific, previously-agreed-upon milestones for negotiations between senior-level officials from the P5+1 (China, France, Russia, the UK and the US, plus Germany) with Trump at the table. This was how the JCPOA was negotiated. But Trump is keen to burnish his reputation as a dealmaker, and thus to be front and centre during all talks and claim credit for any progress. This is the approach he has employed with North Korea – Trump himself kicks off negotiations with senior officials and engages in the high-profile ceremonial aspects of the event, with substantive technical and diplomatic negotiations to follow. In the long term, both Washington and Tehran want to resolve tensions and avoid a war, but their conflicting negotiating strategies are frustrating that objective. The stalemate is likely to persist unless one side takes a gamble.
Taking a gamble
Iranian leaders are well aware of the domestic political pressures Trump is facing. And, as the 2020 US election draws closer, Iranian leaders are calculating that Trump will be more likely to fold first as pressure mounts on him to conclude a deal with Iran that he can cast as superior to the JCPOA. Yet Tehran is also aware of the risks of engaging with the US. Given that the United States has withdrawn from not only the JCPOA but several other major international agreements, Iranian leaders understandably doubt the credibility and trustworthiness of the US to deliver sanctions relief after an initial meeting. Rouhani has survived domestic turmoil thus far despite US disavowal of the JCPOA and the severity of reimposed sanctions. But if Tehran were to engage with Washington and the talks were to fail, it would be difficult for the president to recover politically.
With the onset of another set of sanctions announced on 20 September, it’s clear that if the current dynamics continue, Iran’s economic deprivation and its people’s suffering will only increase. Iran’s strategy of flexing its muscles in the region is also not sustainable in the long run. With each provocation, the risk of a potentially escalatory confrontation with the United States increases substantially. Furthermore, while Iranian provocations do signal its ability to inflict damage, they could prompt additional US sanctions, and Iran’s capacity to absorb economic pain is shrinking.
A meeting between Trump and Rouhani, in the context of the P5+1, could conceivably move forward without any major concessions or breakthroughs if the US were willing to issue some waivers on oil sanctions limited to the duration of the talks. The waivers would function as a confidence-building measure, and enable each side to buy time in an increasingly unstable and untenable situation. Even a slight improvement in US–Iran relations might produce a modest uptick in Iran’s economic performance by encouraging domestic and possibly some international investment. Although a summit or meeting probably would not yield any substantive outcomes, it might at least break the ice, generate a modicum of goodwill, and lead to more fruitful negotiations in the near future.
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