Whilst the financial world reels from Trump’s wrecking-ball attempts to “make a deal” on international trade with China, the White House is sending envoys to Oman to discuss another Hail-Mary deal – this time with Iran.
The lead envoy from the US will be Steve Witkoff, who has so far failed to make any discernable progress in securing peace in Gaza or Ukraine. The central detail in terms of negotiations will be whether the US proposes to restart surveillance of Iranian facilities in return for concession on sanctions, or whether they will press for what is known as the “Libya” option, involving the full dismantlement. This is the hardline option favoured, of course, by Israeli PM Netanyahu.
The focus of these talks will be Iran’s civil nuclear programme, which analysts believe will soon be developed enough to build a nuclear warhead. Iran denies having the ambition to build nuclear weapons, but senior Iranian officials have stated that they may have no choice if their country is attacked.
Meanwhile, Trump continues to threaten military action against Iran if they do not agree to a deal, and the US continues its unprecedented military buildup in the region.
Does this sound like serious dealmaking to you?
We must recall that a nuclear deal with Iran was achieved by the Obama administration in 2015 – an agreement called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). As part of this deal, Iran agreed to limit its nuclear ambitions and open its facilities to inspection by International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors. In return, the US unfroze hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Iranian assets and lifted economic sanctions on the country.
President Trump pulled the US out of the JCPOA in 2018, reimposing sanctions on Iran, which subsequently felt licensed to ignore the deal’s restrictions.
But there is an important subsidiary point: as long as nuclear powers promote the false logic of “deterrence,” they promote the value of nuclear weapons to all countries who feel any geopolitical threat – especially those countries that are considered “adversaries”!
That’s one reason why the logic of deterrence, so foundational to the nuclear weapons mythology, makes us all less safe. As long as nuclear states pretend that their apocalypse arsenals are intended to prevent war (a notion emphatically disproven by history), they actually make a deeply irresponsible case for nuclear proliferation.
There has never been a more important time to renew the case against nuclear weapons, with tensions escalating in the Middle-East, in Eastern Europe and the Asia-Pacific regions. The vision the peace movement must promote is one that prioritises diplomacy and international disarmament agreements over military responses, which can only worsen these complex affairs.
In peace,
Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament