Andleeb Abbas
For a President who proclaimed an anti-war stance to win the election President Trump is trying his level best to do otherwise. From bombing Afghanistan with the mother of all bombs, to attacking Syrian bases and now cancelling the nuclear deal with Iran, Donald Trump is loud and clear with his intent and actions. The latest cancellation of the nuclear deal is capping a year marked with bans, bombs and bizarre policy decisions. Of all these momentous executive orders, perhaps the Iran nuclear deal was the most predictable. It was Trump’s trump card for a long time and was the easiest to implement. The reason given by Trump to justify this withdrawal is that the purpose of the deal had failed. He said: “This was a horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made. It didn’t bring calm, it didn’t bring peace, and it never will.” This typical Trump trumpet is hollow, as facts speak louder.
The US-Iran conflict was triggered off by President Carter imposing sanctions when a group of Iranian students stormed the American embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979, taking more than 60 US citizens hostage and sparking an international crisis. Despite the release of hostages, every US President since then has imposed sanctions on Iran. Iran’s defiance to pursue its own policies was severely punished by these sanctions. The oil imports were banned. In 1995, Conoco and Iran announced a $1 billion contract that would give the US-owned company unprecedented access to two Iranian oil fields. The Clinton administration leapt into action, claiming the contract threatened national security, and imposed sanctions. Post 9/11 President Bush introduced the axis of evil concept where Iran was positioned as one of the biggest threats to the peace of the world due to its nuclear capability. Obama continued the sanctions in his first term but eventually signed a deal with Iran in 2015 which received wide global support. Trump has claimed that this deal gave a free hand to Iran that made them as dangerous as they ever were. Let us examine what his main objections were and what the reality is:
Trump said that Iran was violating the treaty as inspectors were not given full access to make a true assessment about whether it was fully complying with the treaty. The evidence he presented to back this claim was through the documents provided by Israel to show the development of a “spherical device,” high-explosives testing and missile launch sequences, including an explosion at 600 meters. What he did not tell was that this evidence was collected on activities held before 2004, which had already been discussed and negotiated in the deal and that no such activity had been carried out post 2004.
Another objection Trump had was that it was a win-lose economic deal in favour of Iran where they got billions of dollars on lifting of the sanctions while US got little in return. This was almost an accusation of some illegal control of money by Iran through some underhand deal. However, the truth is that the US paid $1.7 billion in cash to Iran. That represented $400 million plus interest that Iran had paid US before the Islamic revolution in 1979 for military hardware that was never delivered. Thus, it was Iranian money that had been frozen by the US as part of sanctions.
The problem with this unilateral action in a multilateral deal is that US violates the letter and spirit of the deal. JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) is the deal between Iran and P5+1. They appointed International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect, monitor and report on Iran’s adherence to the deal. Over the 28 months the deal has been in effect, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the foremost authority on the matter, said it found Iran committed no violations- aside from some minor infractions that were rectified.
It is President Trump who is violating the deal. Why is he basing his decisions of cancelling such a crucial deal on the basis of a report presented by Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu instead of IAEA? Why has he cancelled the deal without the agreement of other members of JCPOA when all of them objected to such a step? Why has he not called a joint meeting of all the members before making the decision? Multilateral deals are not mere paper stamps and thus should not be at the mercy of the extra territorial jurisdiction of a superpower. International and multilateral deals are more about the spirit of consultation and mutual decision making.
The major objection Trump had was that this deal was endangering the world peace. In actual fact, it is the withdrawal from this deal that has endangered the deal. A few hours post this cancellation Israel attacked Iranian forces in Syria on the Golan Heights and Iranian forces carried out counter strikes on Israeli soldiers. This has the potential of scaling up to a more permanent war. Fortunately, the other member countries have condemned it and are saying that they will continue with this deal. This is a testing time for the world, for the United Nations, for the European Commission, for Russia and for China. Having individually condemned Trump’s action it is time to call a meeting of JCPOA member countries to develop a plan of action that covers legal, diplomatic and political steps to be taken to counter the dangers of breaking off this deal and putting pressure on President Trump.
The UN needs to call a meeting to pass a resolution against this unilateral action and announce measures to contain the dangers to peace and security. For Pakistan, it needs to come out with a clear policy statement. The Foreign Office has made a few utterances of objections but this is too important an issue to be relegated to just the Foreign Office.
(The writer can be reached at [email protected])
