(Washington Insider Magazine) – When reports came out that suggested that Russia might look to cause trouble for the reconstructed JCPOA that the United States wishes to rejoin after the folly of the administration of Donald Trump, shutters went out across the international landscape. Considering how long this saga and these negotiations have gone on for, the thought of all of the hard work put in by all parties being negated by the international crisis regarding Russia and Ukraine was surely gut-wrenching. After years and years, threats, minor conflicts, assassinations, elections and so much drama, another roadblock had seemed to emerge to snatch defeat from the proverbial jaws of victory. Yet events played out in real-time, it did not take long for international circumstances to change in largely predictable ways.
Within days and the week, both the United States and Iran had spoken out – veiled and otherwise – regarding the Russian pronouncement, Iranian officials traveled to Moscow to chat with their Russian counterparts, and Russia was either placated by the allies, dismissed and convinced by Iran, or some combination of the two. While Russia states that written promises were made to them by the US, US officials have yet to confirm as much directly; in any event, while some sources say that no deal is imminent, others say that there are but one or two final hang-ups left to solve and resolve before the JCPOA is, in many ways, born again.
And it is not being derailed by Russia, for the very same reason that they may have been attempting to leverage their own position in the first instance: Russia cannot afford to alienate too many more polities across the planet, and that is not difficult to understand with just a bit of study. While Russia wished to use its leverage as a member of the group of nations negotiating with Iran towards the JCPOA, as well as its friendship with Iran outside of that to its advantage during this unprecedented conflict and the massive, multilateral response to it that has left Russia isolated and relatively paralyzed in many, various ways, pushing too hard was no longer as safe as it seemingly used to be. As with everything else regarding the greater conflict they find themselves intimately invovled in today, the Russians seem to have “massively misjudged” and miscalculated their position once again, but Iran wasn’t having it.
While Russia is just now feeling the existential pain that Iran has been under for the greater part of the last forty-plus years under some variation of an American and multilateral sanction campaign, Iran has been worn and withered away in varying ways as a society and people by the extended sanction campaign that amounts to what I have called “forever sanctions.” If it can even be considered that sanctions caused or affected that nation’s desire to compromise with the international community on a myriad of issues after over forty years, it must be admitted that surely that cannot by any stretch of the imagination be considered to be any more time-effective than it is humanitarianly; I have recently said as much regarding North Korea, in fact, as well. But truly, one suspects that real, good-faith negotiations before the time of the Obama administration might have yielded a similar result years, and perhaps decades, earlier.
But, returning to the point at hand, while Iran is surely sympathetic to some degree regarding the new, self-created plight of Russia, they do see once more the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel regarding their own circumstances. They were not ever going to allow even a normally close ally like Russia to upset that innovation, it being the most beneficial and important of all the innovations a President and Supreme Leader can have upon their resumes in Iran, no matter if they wish to admit it or deny it.
Russia quickly came to understand this by not only the world’s response, but the various responses that Iran gave both publically, as well as clearly privately, to that Russian delegation regarding the prior declaration. They realized, likely as quickly as they had previously regarding their own invasion of Ukraine, that their position as originally imagined was not nearly as solid or as sustainable as they had previously hoped for. Furthermore, it is clear that Russia realized very much along the way that, while the pre-conflict world likely had Russia and Vladimir Putin with greater leverage over Iran than the other way around, things are not so lopsided anymore.
That is precisely because, while Iran stuck to the course to get the multilateral agreement that they wanted, as they furthered the leverage that their nuclear program had been building up pre-JCPOA and post-disintegrated-JCPOA, and so was able to take advantage of the Trump era American misstep when a more reasonable and pragmatic President came to power in 2020. Russia, on the other hand, thought too highly of the leverage that it had itself cultivated through what appeared at the time to be the clever positioning of troops along a nation’s own borders; it, therefore, flew too close to the proverbial Sun as it attempted to leverage its position far beyond what it could realistically produce from the circumstance.
What could have been a pathway towards multilateral progress, away from the previous, limited sanctions levied upon it, became a massive mistake that the Russian government has yet to extradite itself from. Iran, when presented with a far less fair circumstance by Donald Trump, to their credit, did nothing incorrect regarding starting some grand international conflict, and instead, cultivated their leverage as they waited for the next opportunity, like any nation would be wise to do when wrongly double-crossed on the international stage. Yet even when that day comes, it will still have to work its way back, and so needs allies that can assist with that – and Iran is likely going to be able to do so in some capacity in the near future.
While playing tough with Iran could have yielded even greater isolation for Russia in a world where they have been excluded from the JCPOA and put at odds with Iran over the quarrel, acquiescing as they did – regardless of alleged American guarantees – will actually leave Russia more connected and a part of the international community of nations than they would have been had they failed to strongarm Iran and the other members of the JCPOA. Russia needs Iran more than ever before at this moment quite likely, and as Iran looks to be freeing itself from the absolute bonds of the international sanction regime that rested upon it, led by the United States of course, that nation will have the chance to decide which nations it will cast its lot with moving forward.
Russia knows that it stands in a precarious position right now amidst the backlash and redistribution of international capital, resources and international favor, and that it cannot afford to lose many more friends, safe havens or founts of material as it looks to sustain itself as a nation while prosecuting a war in Ukraine with all of its closest allies. It needs Iran and needs Iran and all of its other acquaintances and friends to feel empathy towards it, not animosity or apathy by varying degrees. And so, after so many years in which it must have felt as though nations were ordering Iran around ad infinitum, Iran has now in just the last year alone gotten to dictate terms – again, by varying degrees – to both Washington and Moscow, as well as to London, Paris, Beijing and elsewhere.
For Iran, that likely feels better than the alternative, and while Washington likely knew it would have a tough negotiating cycle on its hands after the way Donald Trump sabotaged the agreement last time, it is doubtful that Moscow and Vladimir Putin ever imagined a circumstance where they would not hold substantial power in discussions and foreign policy as a sort of ally-patron of that nation. Russia, to be sure, must now wait with bated breath in the hopes that the JCPOA happens, at which point they will likely benefit to some extent, and will likely hope to expand that benefit with a freer, less economically constrained and diplomatically ostracized Iran; Iran too, will be able to more effectively and positively contribute to the international community of nations as a whole, and that will create a more stable, equitable and safe world as well.
That is all well and good, and the world will be a better place for it of course. Regarding Russia, however, things are a bit different. Because of the machinations of Vladimir Putin, that nation is likely in for a difficult and unfair time of it for the foreseeable future – even after many sanctions are removed and the war itself has been ceased; the violations of human rights and international norms is dreadful and will likely not be forgotten, no matter how much the world would like to. And so, however things all end up playing out, Russia has been humbled multiple times throughout this conflict, and once more during the nearly completed tragedy of sorts that has been the JCPOA saga with Iran.
