Khamenei's Conditional Approval and the Uncertain Future of the JCPOA

The leadership of the Islamic Republic announced its conditional approval for the implementation of the comprehensive nuclear agreement with the 1+5 group in a written letter to Hassan Rouhani. He essentially endorsed the resolution of the parliament and the National Security Council with added considerations. Until now, Ayatollah Khamenei had maintained an ambiguous stance towards the JCPOA and adopted a dual policy. The hidden aspect of this policy was to guide and direct the final round of negotiations in the twelve-year nuclear marathon, which bore fruit after nearly four years. These negotiations, divided into two phases of 'secret talks' and 'public softening of positions' (during Rouhani's term), were conducted with the green light and under the control of the leadership. Several officials from Rouhani's government, including Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri, have stated that the details of the negotiations during the eleventh government were communicated to the leadership and that the JCPOA was achieved with his approval. However, in public, he has acted in a way that portrays him as a critic of the JCPOA. In the text of his letter to Rouhani, the aforementioned dual policy is described more explicitly. This duality, from one angle, is an inevitable result of his strategic contradiction with the United States and, at the same time, a tactic for nuclear negotiation with a government he refers to as 'more devilish than Satan.' Due to concerns about the intensification of internal and external consequences of continued sanctions, he reluctantly moved towards a controlled compromise and retreat in nuclear matters. Khamenei considered the JCPOA to have ambiguities and structural weaknesses that, without careful and continuous monitoring, could lead to significant damages for the present and future of the country. He rejected Rouhani and Zarif's interpretation of the JCPOA and their defense of it as a good agreement. His assessment of the JCPOA, in terms of discourse, is similar to that of the critics and the report of the special commission on the JCPOA. However, in practice, it contradicts the position of the members of the Stability Front who sought changes to the terms of the JCPOA. Ultimately, Khamenei confirmed the government's view for implementing the JCPOA based on the foundation established in the Vienna negotiations. The immediate short-term consequence of the leadership's letter is the passage of the JCPOA through its final legal stage and decision-making in the system. The implementation of the nuclear agreement by the Islamic Republic has now been confirmed. However, by thanking the special commission and their efforts, he has theoretically strengthened the opponents and has given them a role equal to the negotiators in the post-agreement atmosphere. Essentially, Khamenei, by thanking the members of the negotiating team, critics, the head and members of the JCPOA commission, the head and representatives of the parliament, and members of the Supreme National Security Council, seeks to ensure that the government and extremist conservatives do not end up in the position of winners and losers of the nuclear agreement. In the substantive analysis of Khamenei's important letter, two general axes can be identified. First, the considerations and conditions he set for the implementation of the JCPOA, and second, his repeated emphasis on the unchanged hostile nature of the U.S. government towards the Islamic Republic. The U.S. remains the 'Great Satan' according to Khamenei, who reiterated previous positions that enmity with the U.S. and preventing normalization of relations with that government in the post-nuclear agreement period will not undergo significant changes. Preventing the enemy's influence is a code name for containing views within the government that do not see the U.S. as having malicious intent and a devilish nature, and consider working with and compromising with it as possible. Khamenei's main concern after the nuclear agreement is to prevent the rise of opposing views to the confrontational foreign policy within the government and society. However, he does this with particular delicacy so that the existing rift within the government does not turn into a dual sovereignty and, in his view, does not create a path for Western influence in the disputes that arise. Khamenei's strategic commonalities with Rouhani allow him, unlike during the reformist period, to establish a fragile balance between the moderate and hardline factions of the government. Khamenei, by endorsing the nine conditions of the parliament and the considerations of the National Security Council, also added nine other stipulations. His points at the start of the JCPOA do not create problems, although they may cause delays. However, in the medium term, Khamenei's points make the implementation of the agreement more difficult and complex. If the mentioned conditions are not merely superficial and rhetorical, they then have the potential to disrupt the implementation of the JCPOA. In other words, he increased the risk of the JCPOA for the other side, especially the U.S. government. Khamenei, aware that the U.S. government and the European Union have issued orders to lift sanctions, made Iran's commitments contingent upon receiving written and firm guarantees. Currently, according to the statements of Abbas Araghchi, a member of the negotiating team in an interview with state television, Western governments have announced that they will halt sanctions in their legal framework after the JCPOA is formalized. However, the implementation of the lifting of sanctions is contingent upon reciprocal actions by Iran and a report from the agency regarding the resolution of issues related to potential military dimensions. Therefore, the ball is currently in the Islamic Republic's court to reduce the volume of stored nuclear fuel and limit the level of its nuclear program. The issue of the precedence and sequence of actions by both parties is not particularly problematic. The Iranian executive team has accepted that the West has taken the expected steps. The main issue is Khamenei's emphasis on the complete lifting of sanctions, while the West's interpretation is based on temporary lifting and maintaining the structure of sanctions in case the Iranian government violates the terms of the nuclear agreement. Araghchi reduced the disputes to the management of internal disagreements regarding the Obama administration's claims about the nuclear program and the concessions it obtained from Iran. In his view, the Obama administration, in order to curb the Republican obstructionism within the U.S. government, is compelled to maneuver on the renewability of the lifted sanctions. Although Araghchi's statement is somewhat correct in that the structure of international and unilateral sanctions is collapsing and their reconstruction is not as easy as the Obama administration thinks, the structure of sanctions remains based on the provisions of the JCPOA. Deviations in the Islamic Republic's nuclear performance during the implementation period could lead to the re-imposition of some or all sanctions through a complaint from one of the members and the committee's dissatisfaction with Iran's response after the deadline. Araghchi's pragmatic solution, which seems to be the intention of Rouhani's government, has little capacity to resolve the issue. Maintaining the structure of sanctions is a key matter from the perspective of the U.S. government and its Western allies. Khamenei also considers the approval of any new sanctions by Western governments, even outside the nuclear realm, as a reason for Iran to abandon its commitments to the JCPOA. In the nuclear domain, Khamenei's argument is defensible in that as long as Iran adheres to the requirements of the agreement, the approval of new sanctions disrupts the agreement. However, since issues related to terrorism and human rights were not addressed in the nuclear negotiations, such an expectation is not justified. Essentially, Khamenei wants to extract another concession from the West and expand the security guarantee spectrum resulting from the JCPOA so that Europe and the U.S. government do not create obstacles and limitations for authoritarian actions within the government and confrontational foreign policy in the region. Such an expectation is unlikely to be accepted by the West. Although their sanctions in the realm of human rights and terrorism have been more symbolic and have not exerted heavy pressure on the government, this condition from Khamenei could provoke Republicans, especially far-right members in the U.S. Congress, to approve new sanctions in the areas of human rights and terrorism, thereby challenging the continuity of the JCPOA. Additionally, this approach completely undermines the U.S. government's expectations for changing the behavior of the Islamic Republic in the global and regional arenas and blocks the path for the positive impact of the JCPOA in reducing the police state atmosphere and political openings domestically. The remaining conditions Khamenei has proposed do not jeopardize the survival of the JCPOA but only make its continuation somewhat more difficult and the implementation path more uneven. His emphasis on forming a committee to monitor the implementation of the JCPOA and the performance of Western governments takes the power out of the hands of the government and increases the challenges and risks of implementing the JCPOA with the presence of views that do not consider détente with the West important. However, as previously explained, the main obstacles that the leadership has placed in the path of implementing the JCPOA emphasize the permanent removal of the structure of sanctions and the non-approval of any sanctions during the implementation of the JCPOA. If there is serious will behind this demand, it could lead to a fate similar to that of the Paris Agreement for the JCPOA. Furthermore, from the above letter, it can be concluded that contrary to the apparent claims of the regime and especially the leadership, sanctions have been the main reason for agreeing to the nuclear agreement in exchange for limiting the nuclear program, and the importance of preventing a recurrence of this is such that the regime is prepared to bear the cost of disrupting the JCPOA.