President Donald J. Trump faces an Oct. 15 deadline on whether to certify the Iran nuclear agreement negotiated by his predecessor, Barack Obama. Signs indicate that Trump will decertify the deal, formally the Iran Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The agreement, which aimed to limit Iran’s ability to produce nuclear weapons, was reached in 2015, with the United States, Iran, the United Kingdom, France, Russia, China, Germany and the European Union as parties to the deal.
As candidate and now president, Trump has been harshly critical of the JCPOA. In his September speech to the United Nations, he described the deal as “one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into.” While the administration has already certified the Iran agreement twice, it has done so begrudgingly.
The apparent decision to decertify is curious. The president could, if he wished, simply re-impose sanctions using his executive power. But he is hesitant to do so, perhaps because it appears that most of his foreign policy team believes such a step would roil relations with allies in Europe and, should the JCPOA fall apart, prompt Iran to resume an accelerated nuclear program.
At one level, decertification could simply be a face-saving device that permits Trump to express his displeasure with the JCPOA without killing it outright. The decision to “punt” the final say on the deal to Congress resembles his approach on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Candidate Trump had promised to end the program on “day one” of his presidency. Instead, in September, the president extended the program for six months, ostensibly to give Congress an opportunity to replace it with permanent legislation.
The decertification will occur under the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act (INARA). The act, passed in 2015, compels the president to certify every 90 days that:
1) Iran is fully implementing the agreement;
2) Iran has not committed a material breach of the agreement;
3) Iran has not taken any action that could significantly advance its nuclear weapons program; and
4) suspension of sanctions against Iran is appropriate and proportionate to measures taken by Iran with respect to terminating its illicit nuclear program, and remains vital to U.S. national security interests.
The last clause gives Trump some wriggle room. It permits him to decertify Iran without having to show that Iran is in violation of the JCPOA. This would be hard to do, as the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is charged with monitoring Iran’s nuclear facilities under the JCPOA, declared in late August that Tehran was in compliance with the agreement.
Once decertification occurs, Congress has 60 days to determine whether to re-impose sanctions. What happens then is anyone’s guess. Congressional Republicans (and some Democrats) opposed the Iran deal in 2015. Whether they will kill U.S. participation in the JCPAO now is another matter. We may see the re-imposition of some, though not all, sanctions. There may also be efforts to impose additional sanctions on Iran in such areas as ballistic missile development and its support for the Assad regime in Syria. Such an approach would conform to a broader strategy — supported by some who advocate for a more assertive posture toward Iran — that has been called “waive and slap.” Under this approach, the United States would continue to be part of the JCPOA but increase sanctions (with or without allies) on Iran’s non-nuclear activities.
Iran’s response will depend very much upon the scale of reinstated or new sanctions. Tehran will no doubt condemn any such moves as contrary to the JCPOA. But whether this will prompt Iran to withdraw from the arrangement — and forgo the advantages of international sanctions relief — is another question altogether. Moreover, should Iran exit the JCPOA and expand its nuclear program, it would raise the prospect of an eventual military strike — by the United States, Israel or both — against its nuclear facilities.
The other parties to the JCPOA are, by all counts, satisfied with it; there is no desire to renegotiate the agreement. Washington could put leverage on them were Congress to re-impose secondary sanctions that target non-U.S. firms doing business in Iran. This could cause a rift between the United States and its European allies; it could also prompt them or other affected countries to challenge secondary sanctions at the World Trade Organization.
If Trump decertifies the Iran deal, in other words, we will move into yet more uncertainty about the JCPOA’s future. Even if Congress does not resort to a wholesale re-imposition of sanctions, we can expect heightened advocacy for containing what some believe to be Iran’s expansionist regional policy. We may not see the demise of the nuclear deal — at least not yet. But we should prepare ourselves for even rockier times ahead in U.S.-Iran relations.
Joe Barnes is the Bonner Means Baker Fellow at the Baker Institute. From 1979 to 1993, he was a career diplomat with the U.S. State Department, serving in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.