THE IDEATIONAL FACTORS BEHIND THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL

 

The invention of the atomic bomb, starting from its first detonation as part of the Manhattan Project, has convinced the world that there will be severe consequences stemming from a nation’s ambition to proliferate weapons of mass destruction. The demonstration of its power against Imperial Japan ended the Second World War in a matter of fleeting moments, though in exchange, inaugurated the start of the Cold War. During this period, nuclear weaponization as a strategy of deterrence became an important part of international relations, as the threat of mutually assured destruction kept countries away from conflict outside of confrontational warfare. Iran, with her nuclear ambitions, is setting a clear precedent for a world peace powered by uranium. To understand this phenomenon, one must consider Iran's socio-political-cultural background. This paper contends that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) cannot be understood completely based on realist and/or liberal explanations as they underscore the important social dimensions that overall has a great stake in the outcome(s) of the deal.

Initially, the JCPOA was a "comprehensive" deal designed to limit Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon in exchange for the lifting of sanctions; as a way of addressing the insecurities surrounding Iran’s growing securitization. In most parts, the JCPOA did succeed in limiting Iran’s nuclear capability (Mogherini, 2017). However, the nuclear deal has produced various unintended consequences that international relations scholars often ignore in their studies. According to Waltz (2000), structural realism refers to the structural constraints that determine the behavior of major state actors, its ordering principle, and distribution of power capabilities. There is an offensive and defensive aspect of realism. If the international community is anarchic, this would suggest that Iran’s nuclear proliferation is a form of defensive realism, and US’ push for the JCPOA would be offensive realism. Many arguments contend to the notion that Iran’s nuclear program is motivated by growing security challenges in the region that gives it enough incentive to proliferate nuclear weapons. Incidentally, the circumstances in the region have incubated a security dilemma that is only exacerbated by Tehran’s poor diplomatic relationship with Israel, its alleged role in sponsoring regional terrorism, and the strong hand it plays in the global petroleum market (Wagner & Onderco, 2014). Moreover, Iran is geographically bordered by seven countries, and is in one of the most important and strategic locations on the planet; allowing it to conveniently put a chokehold over the Persian Gulf and assert its influence over much of the Middle East (Azodi, Vatanka & Rogenhofer, 2009). One author even likened Iran to a “mountain fortress” due to its geographical features (The geopolitics of Iran: Holding the center of a mountain fortress, 2011). In realist terms, these would be known as structural modifiers. However, its geography is both its boon and bane as it situates Iran between many countries that can potentially turn hostile anytime. A notable example would be the eight-year armed conflict between Iran and Iraq in the 1980s – with the latter’s motive for invasion being to replace Iran as the dominant state in the Persian Gulf (Takeyh, 2010). Evidently, Iran is comically put in a location prone to conflict, and the JCPOA acts as a security countermeasure to prevent any major conflict from getting radioactive. However, this exclusively realist assumption unfortunately produces an unintended consequence – by pursuing a policy that lifts international sanctions, Iran would now have access to other ways of empowering itself, such as by increasing its relative power regionally and internationally through enhanced economic freedom. Thus, even if Iran were unable to produce nuclear weapons, it could simply pursue other forms of securitization such as financing its conventional forces, or continue sponsoring terrorist groups in the region. Of course, all of this alludes to the paranoic perspective that realists have over everything. The realist approach in this sense is limited by viewing the JCPOA as a solely securitization issue while disregarding the other interventions that come into play, such as Iran’s mutual desire for peace, stability, and economic growth. Ironically, all these realist assumptions have a constructivist foundation that is ignored by realist scholars. For realists, Iran’s ambitions are purely security and knows no peaceful resolution. This singular realist view was favored by the Trump administration, who did not believe that Iran will stop its nuclear enrichment entirely unless there is a hard- cut permanent solution (Landler, 2018). To this end, the JCPOA evolved as an instrument of institutionalism in Obama’s time to an instrument of de-securitization by the time of Trump’s tenure, who ultimately disregarded the JCPOA altogether. Both parties failed to consider the socially constructed aspects of the deal, such as the historical factors underpinning Iranian big-A ambition more generally. Unsatisfyingly, the realist interpretation hit the wall as soon as the JCPOA failed to account for other theoretical implications of the deal vis-à-vis the significance of the liberal and constructivist outlooks.

Clearly, realist explanations alone cannot describe the evolution of the JCPOA in its entirety, and as such, other factors must be considered to further the analysis. Enter liberalism. According to Moravcsik (1997), liberalism describes international relations that favors international cooperation, human rights, democracy, and the rule of law. Moreover, liberalism differs from realism due to its believe in progressivism and the attainment of peace through mutual principles. According to an article by Beinart (2015), the approach that the Obama administration took can be understood as a form of liberal institutionalism. In fact, President Obama’s speech unveiling the JCPOA echoed similar sentiments to John F. Kennedy’s 1963 speech on entering diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, with Obama mentioning the concept of an “attainable peace” through the “gradual evolution in human institutions” (Sorensen, 2003; Bowen, 2015). Other than the speech themselves, their approach to diplomacy with otherwise hostile nations were similar as well. Generally, liberal theorists believed that Iran’s nuclear weapons program can be halted by establishing an accountable non-proliferation pact with Iran (Tagma & Lenze, 2020). However, this concept appeared more like liberal idealism than anything. Conflicts in the Middle East are often interrelated, and politics are almost always not confined locally. Obama’s “walk and chew gum at the same time” diplomacy showed that it initially had the resolve to address the Iranian puzzle through diplomatic means alone, only to fall short on its liberal ideals by making a deal with Iran and reassuring the Gulf through defense pacts and even arms sales (Cohen, 2015; Hamid, 2015). However, the US were not the only actors enforcing the liberal agenda. Enter the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), who is a key player in ensuring the safe use of nuclear energy worldwide (Mlynarski, 1970). The international organization aims to accelerate nuclear non-proliferation regime reforms, in which Iran is one of its clients. Under the JCPOA, the IAEA is granted access to information related to Iran’s nuclear program (Verification and Monitoring in Iran, 2014). Furthermore, the IAEA also has the authority to install surveillance cameras, produce seals, monitor centrifuges, confiscate equipment as well as conduct verification activities at Iranian nuclear facilities. If liberalism posits that governments exist to maintain the security of individuals, then the cooperation between the US, Iran, and the IAEA can be cited as a prime example of the liberal agenda where international cooperation equals peace and security. Indeed, nonviolent liaison is the end goal of liberalism. However, the JCPOA only addresses the atomic aspect of Iran’s commitment to regional stability. According to Parker and Noack (2020), Iran has been engaging in expansionist activities using its regional proxy forces for a long time, while maintaining links to paramilitary factions from Syria and Yemen. Furthermore, Tehran is a known sponsor of Hezbollah and other terrorist groups – using them as proxies to export Iran’s revolution beyond its borders (Byman, 2016). Liberalism lends itself to peaceful resolve but yet the liberal conjectures within the JCPOA, which is to ultimately remove Iran’s operational threat through cooperation solely, failed to do just that. This is highlighted by the concurrent signing of defensive pacts between nations in the region as the deal was being brokered. Additionally, the JCPOA hinges on the promise of the “free market”, which is a part of what makes liberalism so attractive. Very simply, Iran’s public support for the JCPOA comes from the perception that sanction reliefs will lessen the economic burden on their country by opening its markets to the world. Iran indeed enjoyed economic benefits from signing the JCPOA (Ng, 2021). However, a small but consistent decline in GDP growth rate following the first year of the deal was enough to bring public approval ratings down by 13% (Paivar, 2018; Poll 1: Iranian Views on Nuclear Deal, 2016). Although liberalism could explain why all the actors involved were involved in the first place, it failed to take into consideration the discreet security consequences of the deal. Though by other standards, liberalism did well in banking in the initially positive public reception towards the deal.

Ultimately, both realist and liberal perspectives had shortcomings in its analysis of the JCPOA, which means constructivism would have a larger role to fill in their place. As stated, this paper contends that constructivism is the ideal perspective to take in understanding the Iran nuclear deal. One glaring point is that both liberal and realist analyses did expose a social dimension, just that it was ignored to keep the individual analyses true to its nature. Another point would be that the Iraq-Iran conflict was actually motivated by Iraq’s desire to cripple the leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini and his movement against Iraq’s Sunni- dominated Ba’athist leadership (Zietlow, 2020). Ba’athism is the nationalist-vanguardist ideology famously followed by Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, which promotes the development of a unified Arab state under the leadership of a progressive revolutionary government (Kaplan, 2018). Evidently, Iran’s nuclear program has clear ideological justifications as much as it does material. In fact, the former Iranian president Ali Khamenei shared similar ideological rationales – asserting that nuclear weapons would be important in securing the Islamic Revolution “from the schemes of its enemies... as a deterrent in the hands of God’s soldiers” (Warrick, 2012). Thereafter, the JCPOA exacerbated the confrontation, and the ideological significance of the nuclear program eventually became a symbol of resistance unified under the Shah (and by proxy, the Shi’ite theocracy) against “the face of a supposedly hostile world” (Patrikarakos, 2012). This evolution (or lack thereof) is highly consistent with the concepts put forth by constructivism, which posits that normative state identity and behavior is formed and molded by the understanding of previous experiences (Cho, 2012). Bearing in mind, Iran suffered the second largest victim count from Iraq’s usage of weapons of mass destruction, second only to Japan (Sagan & Valentino, 2017). This is supported by the historical memories that continues to influence the collective Iranian psyche (Bajoghli, 2013; Motamedi, 2020; Made, 2020). Historical memory and its personified form - state identity - can indeed motivate a desire for conflict; the Bosnian War, for example, was characterized by mass slaughter legitimized by collective memory of the past (Rieff, 2016). Furthermore, the age-old conflict between the Shi’ite theocracy and Sunni groups around the Middle East illustrates the regional tensions in the region that has similarly historical underpinnings. Looking at this ontologically, Iran’s nuclear proliferation is ultimately not about restructuring the global order, it is about confronting its history and its traumas, on establishing its role in a region that has always been conflicted along religious lines, and to preserve its own territorial integrity should the conflicts it experienced in the past be repeated. The initial perception of the JCPOA was acceptable as it provided a sort of catharsis for the Iranian people after years of hardship, but the presence of historical memory and propaganda portraying the western world as imperialistic, hegemonic, and self-interested did not help its cause by the end (Aarabi, 2020). As tensions are fueled by increasing negative sentiments supported by religious, cultural, historical biases, and even moral amnesia, the JCPOA as an institutional document continued to lose its credibility amongst the Iranian public. Indeed, social constructivist factors can shed light on the way the JCPOA is perceived by also considering the neorealist factors that came into play, and the significance that societal factors have in determining the fate of the JCPOA.

Initially, Iran started developing nuclear weapons to protect its own interests in an anarchic global order. The US looked to stop it by proposing the JCPOA - betting on collective cooperation and interdependence. Ultimately, realism failed to describe the liberal factors, and liberalism failed to describe the realist factors. Constructivism, on the other hand, felt completely unrestrictive; it identified the material threats that underpinned Iran’s nuclear ambitions by rationalizing the neorealist notion of state centrality while also considering the socially constructed factors that influenced popular perception of the JCPOA altogether. These factors highlighted themes of theocracy, nationalism, propaganda, historical memory, and popular perception – all of which are social constructs with a historical basis ignored by other IR schools. Thus, the argument of this paper goes to show that constructivism’s inclusive rather than exclusive properties are an important addition to understanding the JCPOA’s evolution throughout the years, its perceptions that were held by people, how it was interpreted by leadership, and how much these factors could converge around and compliment other IR theories to finally form a more coherent picture of the deal.