Vance's Nuclear Lie

Why the Islamabad Talks Failed—and Why Iran Still Holds All the Cards

Vice President Vance arriving for a news conference after meeting with representatives from Pakistan and Iran in Islamabad on Sunday. Photo credit: Jacquelyn Martin

The Islamabad negotiations between the US and Iran ended early Sunday without a comprehensive agreement. Vice President J. D. Vance blamed the breakdown in negotiations on an Iranian refusal to commit to never building a nuclear bomb, which I am quite sure is a flat—out lie. The Iranian government has repeatedly disavowed an militarization of its civilian enrichment program, and Western intelligence agencies have never assessed that it had embarked on a weapons program. This point is one of the most misunderstood in Western media and political analysis, largely because of Israeli propaganda (Israel does have hundreds of nuclear warheads).

Likely what the Iranians refused to give up was the right to nuclear enrichment. The Nuclear Non—Proliferation Treaty, which Iran has signed but Israel and the US have not, bestows the right to enrichment for peaceful purposes such as providing fuel for nuclear reactors: “Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination and in conformity with Articles I and II of this Treaty.” Rusa, China, Brazil, France, Japan, the United States, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Germany all do this.

Political scientist Mohamad Hasan Sweidan asserts that his contacts assured him that one major sticking point was an Iranian insistence that the ceasefire must include Lebanon, a position rejected by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who, Sweidan says, wants to implement a ceasefire there only gradually. Quincy Institute analyst Trita Parsi suggested that Vance was engaged in misdirection when he cited the nuclear issue rather than Lebanon.

But we know that other ousanding issusincluded opening the Strait of Hormuz without Iran imposing tolls on passing ships and Iran’s ballistic missile and long—range drone stockpiles and manufacturing.

These negotiations were never very likely to produce major breakthroughs. They are, however, the most significant talks the US and Iran have had since the negotiation of the 2015 nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA, in which Iran pledged to enrich only to 3.5% and gave up its stockpile of uranium enriched to 19% for its medical reactor. Trump tore up that treaty in 2018, even though Iran was certified to be abiding by it.

In a sense, Trump by authorizing these talks is walking back his absolutist stand of 2018.

The spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Ismail Baqai, insisted that talks would continue and that this round was not the end of the process. The Iranian press blamed the failure to reach an accord on the US making unrealistic demands.

While the Iranians have reasons to want an accord, given the proven US and Israeli ability to inflict tremendous damage on their economy and infrastructure, they also have aces in the hole that make them unwilling to accede to maximalist American demands.

They still have the ability to sabotage oil and gas tankers trying to traverse the Strait of Hormuz. Trump made a big deal out of US warships transiting the Strait on Saturday, but even if it is true it is irrelevant. It is highly flammable tankers that need to be assured that Iran won’t send drones down on them. They are floating bombs in a way that destroyers are not, and they are commercial in character. Insurance costs and the enormous losses that would attend a drone attack are real deterrents. They have to make a deal with Iran as things now stand.

Moreover, the world economy is in danger of being sunk by the bottleneck in oil and gas supplies. US economic growth this year has already been revised down to 0.5 percent because high fuel costs will slow it. The longer the Strait is closed, the harder it is going to be on the world economy. While the US has a cushion because of its own oil and gas—which countries like France, Germany, Turkiye, the Philippines, Japan and South Korea do not—even US prices will spike because energy markets are global and shortages affect prices everywhere.

Already, South Korea is blaming Israel for a reckless war that is playing hell with the South Korean economy, resulting in a major diplomatic spat. South Korea’s president admonished the Israeli government that having been a victim of past injustice does not give one the right to harm innocents in the present. South Korea suffered under Japanese occupation and then the Korean War, so its people know what suffering looks like. And right now, it looks like trying to buy a gallon of gasoline.

The American government has far less time and far less power to avert a looming economic crisis than Vance and the Trump administration realize. Iran’s government, in contrast, knows exactly what it is doing.