If Trump is re-elected, no more chance to save nuclear deal
“If President Trump is re-elected then there would be no point for anyone to keep JCPOA in place, particularly for Iran,” Political Science Professor told ILNA in an exclusive interview.
Speaking to ILNA news agency, Kurk Dorsey who is political science professor at New Hampshire University said that the future of JCPOA depends largely on the elections in the United States in November. Joe Biden will attempt to recreate it or something very close to it. It seems more likely that Biden will win the election, so I think by early in 2021 we will have a renewed version of JCPOA.
“The US cannot force the other states in JCPOA to snapback the sanctions. The other states have all made clear that they oppose such a move, and I do not think that the United States has the clout to force any of them to support such sanctions,” He mentioned.
The author of The Dawn of Conservation Diplomacy: U.S.-Canadian Wildlife Protection Treaties in the Progressive Era added “Separate from whether it can force snapback, it also has withdrawn from, which means that it no longer has the standing to request that other members should re-instate such sanctions.”
Answering o question about why Iran didn’t have the right to reduce its obligations according to JCPOA, Dorsey said “Iran does not yet have the right to reduce its obligations because it has remained in the agreement with the other member states. It has the right to withdraw from the agreement, but doing so might cause the other parties to support renewed sanctions. “
Referring to the recent Rafael Grossi trip to Iran, the US Professor said that Grossi has a central goal of reducing nuclear proliferation, and I think he is worried that Iran will decide to withdraw from JCPOA.
“I suspect that he wants to explain his vision of a future of cooperation with Joe Biden as president. I suspect he also wants to make clear that the good relationship between IAEA and Iran depends on Iran showing patience with JCPOA.”
He added that The IAEA still holds a great deal of prestige in the world, especially among countries that are unhappy with US leadership under Trump, so Grossi is probably expressing to Iran that Iran could lose goodwill if it withdrew.
“IAEA cannot do anything about Israel now that it has nuclear weapons, but it can try to keep a lid on a nuclear arms race in the Mid-East,” he confirmed.
The Political Science Professor stressed that Grossi has been in office only since December, and for much of that he could not travel because of COVID, so the fact that he is traveling to Iran now suggests that he is serious about maintaining the status quo.
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