Iran and America.. From the enrichment card in Oman to the self-assurance gain in Vienna

Joe Biden does not seem to have the boldness and frankness of Barack Obama and his ability to challenge the traditional American domestic policy when dealing with Iran and its nuclear file, nor does he have the arrogance and frankness of Donald Trump and his ability to turn the tables and adopt the option of all or nothing and return once to square one.

With Iran, Biden prefers to stand in the gray area as a traditional democrat who loves to work under the roof of the available and secured without a desire to discover the ability of adventure to create surprises. No one can guarantee that no sudden accidents will occur, and the vehicle may completely capsize.

Today, with Biden in the White House, the options before the American president seem limited. The option of war is not as possible as it was before, nor is the option of acknowledgment of failure and is also wanted. From here, all actors were convinced, even in theory, that there is no real alternative to the nuclear agreement, at least in foreseeable range.

With Barack Obama's accession to the presidency in 2008, America, according to Obama's doctrine, was faced with two options in dealing with Iran, either to go gradually to war by raising the pace of imposing sanctions as the only policy, or to acquiesce in the progress of the nuclear program, at which time Obama chose to open the third track: diplomacy based on Transforming sanctions from a policy into a tool, while offering incentives and gradual concessions to Tehran, as well as opening a secret channel of communication through the Sultanate of Oman for direct bilateral negotiations. enrichment, and that it might accept to enrich uranium on Iranian soil in return for unprecedentedly stringent restrictions on Tehran's nuclear program, and thus the nuclear agreement was born.

After Obama left the White House and Trump won the presidency of the United States, the latter decided to unilaterally withdraw from the agreement, and Iran was surrounded by all forms of sanctions, and the principle of zero enrichment returned as one of the American demands under direct and strong pressure from Israel, which constituted a strong blow to the nuclear agreement that caused it to lose its balance and plunged it into clinical death .

Over the years after the American withdrawal, what Obama said was proven correct, as the policy of sanctions and maximum pressure did not succeed in dragging Tehran to surrender and accept Washington’s conditions. Rather, the nuclear program advanced technically and clearly through the policy of reducing commitment announced by Iran and implemented step by step, on that day. The idea of ​​going to direct war was a point of sharp discussion, but in the end it was not completely convincing to the military side of the Trump administration because of its great cost and its disastrous repercussions on the Middle East and the international situation.

Everyone took their place. Neither the US sanctions were enough to force Tehran to submit, nor the Iranian nuclear measures managed to achieve a clear American retreat. Between the two, everything was frozen and a harsh finger-biting battle between Tehran and Washington on the basis of who would scream first.

Today, with Biden in the White House, the options before the American president seem limited. The option of war is not as possible as it was before, nor is the option of admitting failure also. Hence the conviction of all the actors, even in theory, that there is no real alternative to the nuclear agreement, at least. in the foreseeable future.

In the announced, the Biden administration is moving in this direction as it is trying to revive the agreement, and to return Tehran’s nuclear program to what it was in 2015, and to adopt this as a platform for thinking about the next step, and this option will again clash with the rejection of Washington’s allies, especially Israel and Saudi Arabia, as well as a fierce confrontation with The Republican Party and Congress within the corridors of American domestic politics, all of this indicates that the Republicans, even if they win the upcoming US presidential elections in 2024, will withdraw again from the nuclear agreement if the current efforts succeed in reviving it again.

The spiral of the US presidency seems troubling to the Iranians and their nuclear program in the strategic sense, even if they benefited from employing it tactically in the political and security senses.

An American president signs the nuclear agreement and adopts it, and another American president comes to withdraw from the agreement and seeks to destroy it, at a time when Tehran does not enjoy the economic gains of the agreement, which is one of the determinants of its acceptance of signing the agreement previously. This concern dragged the regime and its important circles in Tehran to a central question: What is the benefit? The process of all this political grinding to revive the nuclear agreement if everything and in the end will remain dependent on the compass of the American voter and his economic priorities?

In answering this question, the principle of guarantees is of particular importance. Tehran is well aware that neither Biden nor any other American president can provide weighty guarantees in this area, and it is also aware that this applies to Congress, and perhaps more importantly, it knows that the nuclear agreement was and what Neither the Americans nor the Europeans are still immune, and this undermines the idea of ​​economic dependence on the agreement.

This logic made Tehran take a new step in negotiating thinking, which will have wide effects if it turns into a practical reality, which is the technical instrument of the concept of self-assurance, and considering it the only guarantee that will raise the cost and push the other to think carefully before withdrawing from the nuclear agreement in the future if the parties succeed in reviving it.

The idea of ​​self-guarantee is based on a simple but important fact. Tehran refuses to give up, destroy or transfer its accumulated technical gains since 2015 when Trump signed the decision to withdraw from the nuclear agreement, and this includes the country’s stockpile of 60% enriched uranium and its 20% enriched counterpart As well as the stock of low-enriched uranium that exceeded the quantity stipulated in the agreement, as well as the advanced centrifuges in quantity and quality, and the country’s stock of heavy water produced in the Arak reactor, as well as advanced experiments in some research such as uranium metal, and the conditions for returning to the protocol Additional work on the work of the International Atomic Energy Agency and its inspectors on Iranian soil.

All these gains together and without going into their complex technical details constitute the accumulated technical dimension of the idea of ​​self-assurance, which Iran insists on maintaining internally by reaching a formula in Vienna.

If the paper of acceptance of uranium enrichment on Iranian soil that Obama played in the secret negotiations of the Sultanate of Oman was the one that opened the way to a wide Iranian twist that led to the signing of the nuclear agreement, then accepting the self-guarantee paper at this stage will open the door to a new concept in dealing with Iran. Iran, and Tehran’s dealing with any upcoming nuclear agreement, will practically mean Iran’s ability to technically return its nuclear program to what it was before the agreement was signed and within only weeks, and not within 20 months of successive steps to reduce commitment, as happened when Trump exited the nuclear agreement.

If this happens, everyone will have entered a new square that needs new approaches, new determinants, and new hours of control when talking about Iran and its nuclear program.