Iran Deal Pitfalls to Avoid in North Korea Negotiations

Iran Deal Pitfalls to Avoid in North Korea Negotiations

The White House’s March 8^th confirmation that President Trump has agreed to meet face-to-face with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un by May has been met by shock and skepticism, but is also cause for extremely guarded optimism that there may be a way out of the North Korean nuclear impasse. The potential meeting, details of which are yet to be worked out, will presumably serve as a springboard for the initiation of negotiations aimed at compelling the denuclearization of North Korea, a prospect to which Kim has expressed openness to discussing. This openness must be treated with a heavy dose of skepticism, however, given the Kim dynasty’s history of pocketing concessions and then continuing to cheat on its nuclear obligations, along with its likely calculus that nuclear weapons are the only guarantor of regime survival.

The surprise announcement precipitated a personnel shakeup, with Trump jettisoning Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in favor of CIA Director Mike Pompeo, partly in order to get a team in place more in line with Trump’s instincts in advance of the North Korea talks. Trump has also decided to replace National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster with former UN Ambassador John Bolton, who has expressed skepticism over the utility of North Korea negotiations, saying in a recent Fox News interview, “Question: How do you know that the North Korean regime is lying? Answer: Their lips are moving.”

Tellingly, Tillerson and McMaster were two of the most prominent voices in the Trump administration in favor of keeping the Iran nuclear deal in place. Trump cited his differences with Tillerson over Iran in explaining his decision to fire the Secretary of State. Trump said, “When you look at the Iran deal, I think it is terrible. I guess he thinks it was ok. I either wanted to break it or do something and he felt a little bit different."

The run up to the prospective Trump-Kim meeting is concurrent with a Trump administration diplomatic push to get our European allies in the P5+1 to amend key shortcomings in the Iran nuclear deal. Trump has signaled that he will pull the U.S. out of the JCPOA and reinstitute powerful nuclear sanctions if the deal is not strengthened by the upcoming May 12 deadline for the president to determine whether to waive U.S. nuclear sanctions against Iran for another 120 days.

Thus, the specter of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the nuclear deal with Iran, will loom large over the administration’s nascent North Korean nuclear outreach. The U.S.’s negotiating position will be greatly strengthened if it is able to attain the sought-after fixes on issues pertaining to the JCPOA’s problematic inspections regime, sunset clauses, and Iran’s ongoing development of its ballistic missile program. Pyongyang will surely be watching, and will expect terms on par with those that Iran received in the JCPOA. As currently situated, the JCPOA provides Iran with a patient pathway to becoming a legitimized nuclear weapons threshold state. When key provisions expire by 2031, Iran will be free to expand its nuclear program to an industrial scale and introduce advanced centrifuges that can potentially reduce its "breakout" time - the time needed to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a nuclear weapon - to a matter of weeks, if not days. This state of affairs must be amended with Iran, and must not be replicated with North Korea.

With the Trump administration apparently embarking on the path to nuclear negotiations with North Korea, it would be well served to reexamine the errors in the Obama administration’s approach to securing the nuclear deal, and with the shortcomings of the deal itself in order to avoid repeating past mistakes. The guidelines below are intended to ensure that the pitfalls which led to the flawed JCPOA are not duplicated in the North Korean case.

1. Don’t reward nuclear cheating

One of the primary problems with the JCPOA was that it effectively rewarded Iran for its checkered history of nuclear cheating, granting sanctions relief and nuclear concessions to the Islamic Republic beyond those available to states which acceded and faithfully adhered to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT). Under the NPT, Iran was bound not to undertake nuclear weapons activities, and to disclose design information of any new nuclear facilities to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Iran violated these commitments, carrying out weaponization activities related to nuclear detonators, and constructing secret nuclear sites including the uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordow, whose existence Iran only disclosed after they had already been exposed.

In negotiating with Iran to reach the JCPOA, the Obama administration backed off simply maintaining the NPT and the additional protocol as the internationally agreed upon, unified standard for which to prevent Iran and other rogue states from acquiring nuclear weapons capabilities, instead favoring an ad-hoc approach whereby countries could negotiate more favorable terms on a case-by-case basis. For instance, the JCPOA legitimized Iran’s right to uranium enrichment, a right which the U.S. has long held is not inherently granted by the NPT and which should have been denied to Iran given its extensive nuclear cheating, at least until such time as it had demonstrated the exclusively peaceful nature of its nuclear program. Iran effectively secured this right for itself, a crucial concession, as a corrective to its habitual flouting of its commitments under the NPT and U.N. Security Council Resolution 1696, which demanded that Iran suspend all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities.

Rewarding Iran’s illicit behavior set a dangerous precedent for future would-be proliferators. North Korea, another repeat violator of nuclear commitments, watched the JCPOA closely and will assuredly seek similar concessions for itself in potential negotiations. The Trump administration must seek to place the genie back in the bottle and reject the ad-hoc approach to nonproliferation that rewards cheaters. It should insist upon restoration of the NPT’s eroded credibility by refusing to grant concessions or other new “rights” to North Korea that go beyond the NPT, and reaffirm the US’s belief that there is no inherent right to enrichment.

2. Don’t cede leverage

On a March 11 appearance on CBS, Pompeo defended Trump’s planned meeting with Kim, stating, “This administration has its eyes wide open, and the whole time this conversation takes place, the pressure will continue to mount on North Korea. There is no relief in sight until the president gets the objective that he has set forth consistently during his entire time in office." The decision not to relent on pressuring North Korea is a wise course correction to the Obama administration’s approach to negotiations with Iran.

Obama administration officials frequently credited the implementation of crippling multilateral sanctions with bringing Iran to the negotiating table in November, 2013. Indeed, the robust enforcement of US and UN sanctions, coupled with Iranian economic mismanagement and corruption, led to hyperinflation and rising unemployment which brought Iran to the brink of an economic crisis. The administration proceeded, however, to treat Iran’s decision to come to the table as a victory in itself, and rewarded the Islamic Republic with limited sanctions relief upon agreeing to the Joint Plan of Action (JPOA), the precursor to the JCPOA. The JPOA’s sanctions relief started Iran on the road to economic recovery, squandering the P5+1’s leverage and enabling Iran to hold out for a suitably favorable agreement.

Iran did not come to the table as a favor to the US, but because it urgently needed sanctions relief. Iran made frequent threats to walk away from the ongoing negotiations when facing potential new sanctions. These threats were hollow, but the Obama administration took them seriously. In dealing with North Korea, the Trump administration should maintain the crippling sanctions in place which are now apparently bringing Kim to the table. The US has the upper hand in the situation, and should impress upon Kim that failure to reach an agreement on terms favorable to the US will result in ratcheting up sanctions even stronger. Potential sanctions should be prepared ahead of negotiations to further pressure Kim, and threats to abandon negotiations should not be taken seriously. North Korea is the party with everything to lose.

3. Don’t frontload rewards

In acceding to the JCPOA, the US agreed to “rent” Iranian arms control for a limited time in exchange for permanent, front-loaded rewards. On Implementation Day of the deal, U.N. sanctions and some E.U. sanctions were lifted, enabling Iran to access $100 billion or more in previously frozen assets. The U.S. ceased applying nuclear-related sanctions against foreign companies for doing business in Iran.

The up-front sanctions relief has revitalized the Iranian economy and reduced leverage to hold Iran accountable for nuclear cheating and malign non-nuclear activities. Since the deal, Iran has signed over $100 billion in contracts with foreign companies.  Iranian economic growth and foreign trade have increased dramatically, while inflation has decreased sharply. The lifting of sanctions has served to whet European appetites for trade and investment in Iran, ensuring that any efforts to “snap-back” sanctions for Iranian violations will be met with resistance.

The Kim dynasty has a storied history of using nuclear negotiations to pocket rewards and then immediately violating agreements. The Trump administration must only offer Kim phased sanctions relief in exchange for verifiably adhering to nuclear commitments over a period of time.

4. Insist on dismantlement

The JCPOA retreated from long-held demands backed by a bipartisan majority in Congress for Iran to significantly dismantle its nuclear infrastructure such that it would have no uranium or plutonium pathway to a bomb. Iran merely had to disconnect and rearrange its excess centrifuges under the deal, ensuring that it could rapidly reconstitute its nuclear program if it decides to abandon the deal. With characteristic bluster, a spokesman for Iran’s atomic energy organization boasted this month that, “If America pulls out of the deal… Iran could resume its 20 percent uranium enrichment in less than 48 hours." Even if Iran adheres to the deal for its duration, it will be permitted to operate an industrial-scale nuclear program capable of breaking out within mere days at the JCPOA’s conclusion.

When it comes to North Korea, which already has nuclear weapons, the US can accept nothing less than the dismantlement of its nuclear weapons and infrastructure. An agreement which would allow North Korea to rapidly reconstitute its nuclear arsenal is untenable.

5. Target nuclear and ballistic missile cooperation

A key shortcoming of the JCPOA is that its restrictions only address Iran’s domestic nuclear weapons program and the agreement lacks an enforcement mechanism to prevent the transfer of nuclear material and technologies between Iran and another country. Thus, the agreement fails to close off a North Korean pathway to an Iranian nuclear bomb, or an Iranian pathway to a ballistic missile delivery mechanism for a North Korean bomb. Nonproliferation experts have cautioned that if Iran is unwilling to freeze its nuclear program until the JCPOA’s restrictions sunset, it can covertly and concretely advance elements of its nuclear program such as advanced centrifuge research, fissile material stockpiling, and weaponization efforts outside of Iran. North Korea is the likeliest locale given the extensive history of Iranian-North Korean nuclear and ballistic missile cooperation.

The Trump administration should close off this loophole by insisting in negotiations with North Korea on provisions forbidding the transfer of nuclear and ballistic missile materials between Iran and North Korea.

6. No deal is better than a bad deal

Obama administration officials repeatedly insisted in the run up to the JCPOA that “no deal is better than a bad deal,” and they were prepared to walk away from negotiations if they could not secure an agreement that would block all Iranian pathways to a nuclear weapons capability. Ultimately however, they acceded to a deal which will legitimize Iran as a permanent nuclear weapons threshold state when key provisions sunset in 8-13 years. The JCPOA did not require dismantlement of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, failed to establish “anywhere anytime” inspections of suspected nuclear sites, did not require Iran to come clean on the prior military dimensions of its nuclear program, and weakened restrictions on ballistic missile development. Further, the sanctions relief windfall Iran attained has enabled Iran to escalate its support for terrorist proxies.

The JCPOA has transformed Iran into an increasingly emboldened adversary with more resources at its disposal whose unchecked aggression has destabilized the Middle East. By 2031, it will additionally be a nuclear weapons threshold state unless the JCPOA is amended. The aftermath of the JCPOA demonstrates clearly the dangers of accepting a bad nuclear agreement. The Trump administration must cast aside concerns over legacy and refuse to accept any deal with North Korea that leads to anything less than full denuclearization and the dismantlement of its nuclear weapons and infrastructure.