In May 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that the United States would be withdrawing from the “disastrous” Obama-era Iran nuclear deal that had been forged in an attempt to prevent the country from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), signed by Iran, the U.S., Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany in 2015, has been a regular target for Trump, who just earlier this week described it on his Truth Social platform as “one of the worst and dumbest” deals the U.S. ever signed.
The White House website during Trump’s first administration said that at best, the JCPOA delayed Iran from pursing nuclear weapons and that Washington would be reimposing sanctions that had been lifted because of the agreement.
It also said the JCPOA failed to deal with the threat of Iran’s missile program and “foolishly gave the Iranian regime a windfall of cash and access to the international financial system for trade and investment.”
But the memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed by Trump on Wednesday to end the war on Iran has raised questions about potential similarities between the two agreements.
On the surface, it’s difficult to compare the two. The JCPOA was a 159-page detailed document hammered out over 18 months between multiple parties and considered a binding agreement. The MOU is a 14-paragraph ceasefire deal, signed between the U.S and Iran, that commits to achieving a final deal in 60 days following the signing.
Daniel B. Shapiro, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel and senior Pentagon official during the Biden administration, wrote that while Trump is mainly focused on comparing his deal favourably with the JCPOA, “we are a long way from being able to make that comparison.”
“Trump’s agreement may end up no stronger or weaker than that deal,” he wrote on the website of the Atlantic Council, where he is a distinguished fellow with its Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative.
Still, Shapiro noted that in some ways, Trump’s deal and the JCPOA are already similar, in that neither dealt with Iran’s ballistic missiles, Tehran’s network of proxy forces or the weakening of the regime.
But like the JCPOA, there’s “plenty of sanctions relief that will strengthen the regime and be poured into Iran’s missile program and proxy network,” he wrote.
Here’s how the two deals compare:
Iran’s nuclear ambitions
Both deals include similar language when it comes to a commitment from Iran not to pursue nuclear weapons.
The JCPOA stated that “Iran reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop or acquire any nuclear weapons,” while the MOU says Iran affirms “it shall not procure or develop nuclear weapons.”
But the JCPOA included specifics regarding enrichment purity caps and uranium stockpiles. For example, Iran agreed to cap enrichment at 3.67 per cent purity for 15 years, below the 90 per cent purity needed to produce a weapon.
Iran had also agreed to cap its enriched uranium stockpile at 300 kilograms, down from the much larger amounts it had previously produced.
Excess material was downblended to the level of natural uranium or shipped out of the country. That reduced Iran’s stockpile by 98 per cent, according to the United States.
The MOU, however, offers no such specifics about the fate of the enriched uranium but states that both parties have agreed to resolve these issues.
On Thursday, U.S. Vice-President JD Vance told reporters that one of the key differences between the MOU and the JCPOA was that the latter deal allowed enrichment.
“Ours will not. [The] Obama deal allowed the accumulation of stockpiled weapons-grade material. Ours is actually leading to the destruction of that stockpile of enriched materials,” he said.
However Robert Pape, a political science professor at the University of Chicago who studies military strategy and international security, said in an interview with CBC News that if Trump believed the JCPOA was a roadmap to an Iranian nuclear weapon, the MOU “is a super highway.”
That’s in part because at the start of the war on Feb. 28, Iran had 440.9 kilograms of uranium that is enriched up to 60 per cent purity.
“So the actual material that’s in the country we’re talking about is substantially more [than in 2015], and this [MOU] is not making any promises anywhere that Iran is going to have this material leave its country,” Pape said.
Another big issue, he said, is that there’s nothing in the new agreement about an ongoing verification process.
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Money for Iran
While not specifically part of the JCPOA, critics of that deal have linked it to a $1.7 billion settlement to Iran paid out by the Obama administration.
That was the settlement for a decades-old arbitration claim between the U.S. and Iran. An initial $400 million US worth of euros, Swiss francs and other foreign currency was delivered on pallets on Jan. 17, 2016, the same day Tehran released five American prisoners.
“The Obama deal gave them over a billion dollars of American money,” Vance said on Thursday. “This deal gives them zero dollars of American money.”
However, the MOU does state that the U.S. will undertake with regional partners “to develop a definitive, fully agreed plan with at least $300 billion US for the reconstruction and economic development” of Iran.
The University of Chicago’s Pape suggested that would also be problematic because it means Gulf countries will be “siding and bandwagoning” with Iran and building a “sphere of influence” for the regime.
But Vance stressed that Iran would only get access to these funds if “they comply fully and change their behaviour.”
Sanctions relief
Under the JCPOA, the U.S., European Union and United Nations lifted sanctions that targeted Iran’s oil, gas, petrochemical, banking, shipping and auto sectors, a move criticized by the Trump administration.
But the MOU also says the U.S. will undertake to terminate all types of sanctions against Iran, which include United Nations Security Council resolutions, on an agreed-upon schedule as part of the final deal.
As well, the MOU states that it will issue waivers for the export of Iranian crude oil and fuel, something that could generate more than $60 billion US a year of revenue, the Wall Street Journal reported.
