Is Iran Already Plotting its Escape From the Agreement?

For years, discussion of the P5+1 talks with Iran has focused on one core scenario of noncompliance: Iran violating a deal and the P5+1 needing to react. But the early history of negotiating with Iran has given us another scenario to consider: Iran simply defecting from the deal altogether.

Defection would mean Iran announcing that it is unilaterally exiting the deal. Iran’s argument in this scenario would be that it has scrupulously upheld its end of the agreement, while the other side has not acted in similar good faith. As such, it has no choice but to defect. The reason this is cause for concern is that Iran has already done it twice – in 2004 and again in 2005 – when it felt that the agreements it concluded with the EU-3 were no longer serving its interests.

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So, if Iran wants to defect, all it needs to do is violate some aspect of the deal – preferably something ambiguous so it can argue that it is not in fact a violation – and wait for the sanctions to snap back. The next step: immediate exit of the deal. And if sanctions are not reimposed, Iran has still gained from the violation while simultaneously exposing international weakness to confront it. Iran can also use this provision as leverage to keep the international powers from calling it out on violations in the first place, so as not to launch this chain of events that would kill the deal. Iran sanctions specialist Mark Dubowitz has already dubbed this “Iran’s nuclear snapback.”

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