US - Iran Relations

Though there wasn’t any Iran Vs USA war, the relationship between
the US and Iran has remained a complex one. The strenuous
relationship includes cutting diplomatic ties and economic sanctions,
without involving an armed conflict even before or after World War
II. The relationship started to turn sour, with the US intervention in
Iran in the early 1950’s by overthrowing Mohammad Mossadegh.
Over a period of time, the peace bridge was built, but was broke after
1980’s. Currently US- Iran has no diplomatic ties.

US-Iran Relations: Timeline

 United States and Iran established diplomatic relations in 1883.

 US-Iran wasn’t very complex before World War II, but it soon
turned chaotic when the US’s CIA helped stage a coup to
overthrow Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in
1953. CIA activities like bribing newspaper editors to spread
fake news, hiring anti-social elements to fuel unrest in the Iran
created a chaotic condition in the Iran.
 Later after several years the US offered Iran a nuclear reactor
and weapons-grade nuclear fuel in 1967
 During a revolution in Iran, the government backed by CIA
was overthrown and the U.S. embassy in Tehran is overtaken
and staff were held hostage for more than a year leading to
diplomatic crisis between the two countries.
 US President Jimmy Carter ordered to cut off diplomatic ties
with Iran and authorizes a rescue mission to get the American
hostages out in 1980. But the mission failed and eight U.S.
service members were killed during the operation.
 But Iran releases the hostages minutes after Ronald Reagan’s 1
inauguration in 1981
 US President Reagan, in his second term, admits to a secret
arms deal with Iran. It became a huge scandal known as “The
Iran Contra affair." (1983)
 Once again, the diplomatic crisis erupted in 1988, When a US
Navy ship was shot down an Iranian passenger plane, killing
290 people who were onboard.
 With complete diplomatic closure existed between the two
countries over the next 15 years.
 US President George W. Bush names Iran as part of an “Axis
of Evil” along with North Korea and Iraq in 2012. But, USA
President George W. Bush pushes for talks with Iran regarding
nuclear deal.
 The deal never moves forwards as the new US President
Barack Obama falls silent and stays away from the negotiation.
 Obama government enforces a new law that put the squeeze on
Iran in financial sector. Lots of countries followed, US to cut
back on buying Iranian oil. Iranian economy takes a big hit.
The following year, Hassan Rouhani was elected president in
Iran. US-Iran Nuclear Deal was signed.
 In May 2018, Donald Trump abandons the nuclear deal, before
reinstating sanctions against Iran and countries that trade with
it. Relations between the US and Iran worsen. The US sends an
aircraft carrier strike group and B-52 bombers to the Gulf
because of what it calls "troubling and escalatory indications"
related to Iran. Then, in May and June 2019, explosions hit six
oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman, and the US accuses Iran. And
on 20 June, Iranian forces shoot down a US military drone over
the Strait of Hormuz. The US says it was over international
waters, Iran says it is over their territory.

Source: BBC News

2
 The Iran Nuclear Agreement
Written by Zachary Laub
The 2015 Iran nuclear agreement is breaking apart, raising the
risk not just of Iran accelerating its nuclear program, but also of a
military clash in the Persian Gulf. Under the agreement, formally
known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran
dismantled much of its nuclear program and gave international
inspectors extensive access to its facilities in exchange for relief
from economic sanctions. President Donald J. Trump withdrew
the United States from the agreement in May 2018, saying it failed
to address Iran’s ballistic missile program and its role in regional
wars. The United States reimposed sanctions and moved to wipe
out Iran’s oil exports. Iran has responded by resuming some of its
nuclear activities, leaving the deal in a tenuous state.

What are the terms of the JCPOA? The JCPOA, which was signed
in July 2015 and went into effect the following January, imposes
restrictions on Iran’s civilian nuclear enrichment program. China,
France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and United States—the five
permanent members of the UN Security Council—negotiated the
agreement alongside Germany; together they were known as the
P5+1. Over nearly two years of negotiations, the Obama
administration said its intent was to set back Iran’s nuclear
program so that if Iran were to pursue a nuclear weapon, the
amount of time it would need to produce enough fissile
material—an indicator known as “breakout time”—would be at
least a year, up from just a few weeks. (To achieve a nuclear
weapon, it would also need the technology to turn this weapon
into an explosive device capable of fitting on a warhead.)
Nuclear restrictions on Iran. To extend that breakout time, the 3
agreement requires that uranium enrichment at Fordow and
Natanz be restricted and a heavy-water reactor, at Arak, have its
core rendered inoperable; its plutonium byproduct, the P5+1
countries feared, could have been reprocessed into weapons-grade
material. These facilities are now being repurposed for research,
industrial, or medical purposes, and they are subjected to
inspections by monitors from the UN nuclear watchdog, the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The accord imposes
limits on the numbers and types of centrifuges Iran can operate, as
well as the size of its caches of enriched uranium. Mined uranium
has less than 1 percent of the uranium-235 isotope, and centrifuges
increase that isotope’s concentration. Uranium enriched to 5
percent is used in nuclear power plants, and at 20 percent it can be
used in research reactors or for medical purposes. High-enriched
uranium, at some 90 percent, is used in nuclear weapons. The
JCPOA’s inspections regime also aims to guard against the
possibility that Iran could develop nuclear arms in secret at
undeclared sites.
Many of the JCPOA’s nuclear provisions have expiration dates.
After ten years, for example, centrifuge restrictions will be lifted,
and after fifteen years, so too will limits on the low-enriched
uranium it can possess, as well as the IAEA’s access to undeclared
sites. Other provisions have no end date.
Monitoring and verification. Among the open-ended provisions,
Iran is bound to implement and later ratify an “additional
protocol” to its safeguards agreement with the IAEA, which gives
IAEA inspectors unprecedented access to Iran’s nuclear facilities.
(As a signatory to the Nonproliferation Treaty, or NPT, Iran has
committed to never pursue nuclear weapons, but it is entitled to
pursue nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.) The
agency issues quarterly reports to its board of governors and the
UN Security Council on Iran’s implementation of its nuclear
commitments. The agency’s late director-general, Yukiya Amano,
described the arrangement as “the world’s most robust nuclear
verification regime.”
A body known as the Joint Commission, with includes
representatives of all the negotiating parties, monitors
implementation of the agreement. Chaired by EU foreign policy 4
chief Federica Mogherini, it is charged with dispute resolution,
and the vote of a majority of its members can gain IAEA inspectors
access to undeclared sites they consider suspect. The body also
oversees the transfer of nuclear-related or dual-use materials.
Sanctions relief. The European Union, United Nations, and United
States all committed to lifting their nuclear-related sanctions.
While the United States only suspended extant nuclear sanctions,
it pledged in the JCPOA to remove specified entities from
sanctions lists and seek legislation to repeal the suspended
sanctions within eight years, as long as the IAEA concludes that
Iran’s nuclear activities remain peaceful in nature.
Other U.S. sanctions [PDF], some dating back to the hostage crisis in
1979, remained even after the JCPOA took effect. They cover matters
such as ballistic missile production, support for U.S.-designated
terrorist groups, and domestic human rights abuses. Though the
United States committed to lifting its sanctions on oil exports, freeing
Iran to trade on international markets again, its restrictions on
financial transactions remained in place, deterring much
international trade with Iran. Many banks and other companies,
including foreign subsidiaries of U.S. businesses, remained wary of
doing business in Iran for fear of incurring fines or being barred from
dealing on Wall Street.
New Security Council resolutions are periodically needed to keep
UN sanctions suspended, so, by alleging a major violation, any one
of the P5 members can veto a new resolution. This “snapback”
mechanism is set to remain in effect for ten years, after which point
the UN sanctions are set to be repealed.
Have the parties upheld their obligations? In January 2016, the
IAEA certified that Iran had met the nuclear agreement’s preliminary
requirements, including taking thousands of centrifuges offline,
rendering the core of the Arak heavy-water reactor inoperable, and
selling excess low-enriched uranium to Russia.

The day of that certification, known as Implementation Day, the

United States, European Union, and United Nations all repealed or
suspended their sanctions. In quarterly reports since then, the IAEA
has certified Iran’s ongoing compliance. Most significantly, the
United States stopped enforcing secondary sanctions that targeted
5
the oil sector, which allowed Iran to ramp up its oil exports to nearly
the level it had been prior to sanctions. The United States also
unfroze certain funds seized from Iran.
Trump ran for president criticizing the agreement, and the
expectation that the United States would withdraw from
it discouraged trade and investment. EU-Iran trade reached more
than twenty billion euros a year before the U.S. withdrawal, but
fearing U.S. sanctions, many large European firms kept out of Iranian
markets.
Iranian officials accused the administration of acting in bad faith,
claiming that by sowing doubt over its commitment to the agreement
and obstructing economic benefits to Iran, the United States was in
violation of the agreement. U.S. officials have discouraged foreign
governments and companies from trading with or investing in Iran,
Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif charged, and the U.S.
Treasury under Trump has not licensed the sale of any aircraft or
spare parts to Iran. Trump formally withdrew the United States from
the agreement in May 2018, reinstating the banking and oil sanctions.
They apply not only to U.S. nationals, who generally cannot transact
with Iran in any case, but to foreign nationals as well. To deal in
Iranian markets, they would give up access to far larger American
ones, as well as access to the world’s predominant banking system.
Announcing the withdrawal, Trump objected to the agreement’s
failure to address Iran’s ballistic missile program or its proxy warfare
in the region, and he claimed that the sunset provisions would
enable Iran to pursue a bomb in the future.
Iran accused the United States of reneging on its commitments, and
Europe of submitting to U.S. unilateralism. In a bid to keep the
nuclear agreement alive, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom
launched a barter system, known as INSTEX, to facilitate transactions
with Iran outside of the U.S. banking system, but it is only meant for
food and medicine, which are already exempt from U.S. sanctions.
Following the U.S. withdrawal, several countries, U.S. allies among
them, continued to import Iranian oil under waivers granted by the
Trump administration, and Iran continued to abide by its
commitments. But a year later, the United States ended the waivers.
“This decision is intended to bring Iran’s oil exports to zero, denying
the regime its principal source of revenue,” the White House said. 6
This was the tipping point for Iran, which said it would no longer be
bound to its commitments as long as the other parties to the JCPOA
were in breach of theirs. In July 2019, Iran exceeded the agreed-upon
limits to its stockpile of low-enriched uranium, and then began
enriching uranium to the higher concentration used in medical
isotopes, still far short of the 90 percent purity required for
weapons. Zarif said that these incremental breaches of the JCPOA
were reversible but would continue absent European compliance.
The European signatories reiterated their commitment to the JCPOA,
Mogherini said that INSTEX will be opened to additional countries,
and that its shareholders were considering using it to trade oil.

How is Iran’s economy performing? The end of sanctions waivers

on oil exports have significantly cut into a vital source of national
revenue. Iran began exporting more than 2.1 billion barrels per day
after the JCPOA took effect, approaching levels from before 2012,
when the oil sanctions were originally put in place. With the
restoration of U.S. sanctions and the end of waivers, these exports
have plummeted to three hundred thousand barrels per day or less.
The International Monetary Fund projects Iran’s gross domestic
product will decline by 6 percent in 2019, following a 4 percent
contraction in 2018.
The decline in oil exports compounds the damage to an already
hurting economy. Iran never experienced the economic recovery that
it had hoped for. Major European firms, uncertain that the JCPOA
would hold up, were wary of investing in the Iranian market even
after the deal was finalized. So too did a wide range of U.S. sanctions
unrelated to the nuclear program. Multinational firms feared being
held liable for transacting with the numerous sanctioned entities
associated with, for example, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard
Corps (IRGC), which holds sway over some industries. With
sanctions deterring above-board international trade, smuggling on
black markets has come into greater demand, enriching the IRGC at
the expense of the regular economy.
Still, factors beyond sanctions are partly to blame.
Corruption, mismanagement, and aging infrastructure are widely
acknowledged barriers to industry, and relatively low oil prices
diminished revenues from export; oil prices remain well below the 7
triple-digit prices per barrel they commanded for much of 2011–2014.
Economic stagnation and rising inequality drove a week of widespread
protests at the end of 2017. Unemployment remains high, at 12 percent,
and is especially prevalent among women and young people.

Source: https://www.cfr.org/