Cliff May: Iran Will Adhere to the JCPOA Until Its Economic Interests Are Secured

How sustainable is the agreement between Iran and the six world powers, and how do changing conditions in Iran and other countries, including the United States, affect adherence to this agreement? Cliff May, in an interview with Radio Farda, answered questions on this topic. Cliff May is the founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which began operations in Washington after the September 11 attacks. He was previously an international journalist and is now an analyst in international security. Do you consider the nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1 a done deal and think it will be sustainable? I really don't know if this question has an answer. Because we are not even sure if Iran is currently fulfilling its commitments, and the reason is that we do not have sufficient monitoring tools. Many issues have red lines, and much depends on Iran. My guess is that Iran will adhere to its commitments in the agreement for the second or third years until it secures all its economic interests, but after that, there is no certainty. What we know is that this agreement has not led to moderation in the behavior of Ali Khamenei, the leader of Iran, and he is in no way ready to cooperate with the United States. He is somewhat negotiating more to gain more benefits from the agreement, while it is unclear whether Iran is fulfilling its commitments as it should. In a recent report by the International Atomic Energy Agency, as a monitor, it states that Iran is fulfilling its commitments. You say that Iran will only adhere to the agreement for two or three years. But if it violates the agreement, do you think it doesn't know it will face consequences? I am not sure those consequences will exist. I never believed that reinstating sanctions would be easy. I don't know how they will want to restore it after the regime of sanctions collapses. It depends on who the next president is and how persistent they are in ensuring Iran fulfills its commitments. I think Iran does not know that violating the agreement will have consequences. For example, the ballistic missile tests by Iran may not violate the agreement, but they violate the spirit of the agreement. If Iran does not want to place nuclear weapons on these missiles, testing them makes no sense. Do you think this agreement, reached a year ago, has changed the landscape of U.S. foreign policy? Yes. The Obama administration changed U.S. policy towards Iran. It is now clear that this was part of the plan from the very beginning of this administration. We now know that negotiations began even before Rouhani was elected president. Obama created the impression that because Rouhani is moderate, negotiations and agreements could be made with him. This was not true, and negotiations were ongoing before that. However, for those who followed these negotiations, since the initial Geneva agreement in 2013, backdoor negotiations in Oman and related issues that occurred before Rouhani's era were clear. Do you remember that Ben Rhodes, a key advisor to Obama in this area, tried to create the impression that these negotiations became possible with the coming to power of moderates in Iran, and much has been said about this issue in recent weeks? Yes. But for me, as a journalist who followed these negotiations step by step, it became clear from the night of the initial agreement in Geneva that these negotiations were ongoing during Ahmadinejad's time, although they were not very successful. They were not successful. That is correct. The answer to your question is that the current U.S. government's policy towards Iran, compared to previous administrations, has been different, but no change in foreign policy towards the U.S. is seen in Iran. We know that Ayatollah Khamenei constantly speaks about America's enmity towards Iran and warns about it. If there has been an effort for renewed friendship, it has been very one-sided and from the U.S. side. Do you think the next U.S. president should negotiate again over the agreement with Iran? I think it will be very difficult for the next president, but they should insist on strict adherence to the commitments without giving more concessions than what is in the agreement. The next president should act more meticulously regarding the monitoring and verification of Iran's nuclear program. I believe the monitoring and verification system of Iran's program in the agreement is weak and should be implemented in the strictest manner. It is clear that all this depends on who the next president will be, but the president should be clear that this issue is not over and should be viewed as a problem. I hope this issue is approached wisely. Iran remains a strategic threat to the U.S. and in the Middle East. Iran wants to take regional hegemony, Sunni countries in the region view it as a threat, it wants to at least annex parts of Shiite Iraq to its empire, it wants to keep Assad as a client, and it wants Hezbollah to act on its behalf in Lebanon, and it has relations with Hamas, and Yemen is another battlefield. These are problems and threats that the next U.S. president will have to face. If Iran is the kind of player you have depicted, how should the West deal with this country? Because isolating Iran has not worked as imagined. There is no simple solution. According to the U.S. State Department, Iran remains at the top of the list of state sponsors of terrorism in the world. I think it is a mistake for the U.S. to assist such a country, enrich it, and empower it. This country is a threat to U.S. allies in the region. You could say that the policy of not empowering Iran has failed, but that does not mean that its counter-policy is preferable today. Today, the Middle East faces a very complex situation. If we look at the tensions in relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia, which have been increasing every day, do you think that not helping to resolve this tension will help the situation in the Middle East? Yes, the situation is very complex. On one hand, you have the tension between Sunnis and Shiites, which is not a new issue and has a history of over a thousand years, and I do not think we can solve it, but I also do not think that what we are doing helps the situation. The Middle East is certainly in a worse state than it was 10 years ago. Syria and Yemen are in chaos and flames. More than 400,000 people have been killed, part of which has occurred in what could be called the Syrian civil war. Iraq has lost parts, and Libya is a failed example, so we can say that previous policies have not helped, but current policies are certainly wrong and have not contributed to the current trend. We have millions of Syrian refugees and the next generation of children who have not gone to school, who may be recruited by jihadist groups including the Islamic State or Al-Qaeda. It is hard for me to talk about progress in the Middle East, and this is due to the policies of the U.S. and Europe in the Middle East. Of course, we were talking about Iran, and someone might say that some of these problems, like what is happening in Libya or the Sunni extremists of the Islamic State, do not have a direct connection to Iran. This depends on how far we want to go back and find the roots. I trace the roots of this extremist jihadism back to 1979 and the Islamic Revolution in Iran. When the first modern government dedicated to jihadism was formed. This was Iran, a Shiite country with a population that is mostly Persian. This action had a significant impact on the Sunni and Arab world, which asked themselves where their Sunni jihadist government was. This could have been Saudi Arabia, but the Saudis were too interested in shopping in Paris and drinking whiskey with their friends in Washington, and they did not form that government. 1979 is also the year when the seizure of the Grand Mosque occurred, which was carried out by a Wahhabi extremist group. After that, Saudi Arabia spent billions of dollars to promote Sunni jihadism. As a result, there is a kind of competition between Sunni and Shiite jihadism. Their forms differ, but both support terrorism and both contribute to fueling the flames of jihadism, and the places where these flames are strongest today are eastern Syria and western Iraq. My last question is about Iran's position in U.S.-Russia relations. After the nuclear agreement with Iran, where has this relationship gone? I think Iran currently views Russia and Vladimir Putin as a strategic ally. Both support Bashar al-Assad, and Putin in Russia and Khamenei in Iran both think that diminishing America and reducing its power is a good thing. Therefore, I think there is practically an alliance based on short-term or medium-term interests. What do you think could change this alliance? In the near future, nothing will change it, but in the long term, I can imagine that with the arrival of the next leader, after the death of Ayatollah Khamenei, Russia could become an obstacle to Iran and the development of its goals in Central Asia. So Iran will be neither close to Russia nor the U.S.? I don't know how the approach to the U.S. will be at that time, but Iran will probably hope that the U.S. will be irrelevant at that time!