Iran and the Nuclear Sunset Clauses

by Paul R. Pillar

Opposition to the Iran nuclear agreement, known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), always has been filled with disingenuous arguments. This reflects the fundamental illogic of the opponents’ position: if the agreement were to be junked, this would mean removing a panoply of restrictions on Iran and re-opening now-closed avenues to a nuclear weapon for the very country that the opponents constantly contend is a serious threat. The principal sources of opposition have had little to do with the terms of the agreement itself or with nuclear matters, even though the specter of an Iranian nuclear weapon was the focus of rhetoric from those same opponents before the JCPOA was negotiated. The sources instead involve governments in the Middle East that have other reasons to try to keep Iran a pariah forever and elements in the United States that want to fulfill campaign rhetoric and trash any accomplishments of the previous administration.

Nonetheless, enough people of good will are vulnerable to being swayed by some of those arguments that the arguments need to be addressed. One of the most frequently mentioned concerns are the so-called sunset provisions, under which time limits (of varying lengths, such as 10 or 15 years) apply to some of the restrictions in the JCPOA. The first thing to point out is that this argument is just as disingenuous as others in that if the JCPOA were killed, or if it had never been negotiated in the first place, the resulting alternative would be worse than the JCPOA according to the very criteria on which the opponents’ argument is based. If there were no JCPOA, then instead of Iran being free of some restrictions on its nuclear activity 10 or 15 years from now, it would be free from those same restrictions right now.

The next thing to note is that even though time limits were applied to some of the restrictions, other restrictions that are highly germane to preventing development of nuclear weapons have longer time limits or do not expire at all. This is true of the permanent bans on any Iranian work on nuclear explosive devices and on any reprocessing of spent reactor fuel, which would be needed to separate plutonium. It is especially true of important aspects of the enhanced inspection arrangements, such as the ability, now also permanent, of the International Atomic Energy Agency to request access to undeclared sites.

Why Agreements Endure

International treaties and agreements typically are not irrevocable and binding forever. No government wants to commit itself and its successors in perpetuity in the face of possible changes in the international environment and in the behavior and objectives of other states. Most international treaties and agreements have explicit time limits and/or exit clauses that permit withdrawal from the agreement after giving some advance notice, usually only a few months. The JCPOA is no more ephemeral in design, and in many respects is built more for permanence, than the average international agreement.

Whether the restrictions and commitments in the JCPOA endure beyond some date a decade or so from now will depend ultimately not on the wording of a sunset clause but rather on whether the parties to the agreement continue to see the bargain embodied in the agreement to be in their national interests. Iranian decision-makers reached the conclusion that avoiding some of the economic and political costs of pariahdom was more in Iranian national interests than an attempt to develop a nuclear weapon would be. Iran and the P5+1 then struck a bargain in which Iran agreed to observe limits on, and closer scrutiny of, its nuclear activity in return for some relief from economic sanctions. The parties to the agreement will continually face the same calculations in the years ahead that they faced when they were negotiating this bargain. As long as they continue to regard the bargain as being on balance beneficial, the provisions of the JCPOA will endure, perhaps through a relatively simple extension agreement. If their calculations change significantly for whatever reason, those provisions may die. Either way, it won’t be the fine print in a sunset clause that determines the outcome.

Opponents of the JCPOA display some of their many inconsistencies on this topic. Donald Trump—the opponent who counts the most—already talks, only a couple of years after the agreement entered into force, of declaring the JCPOA not to be in U.S. national interests and pulling out of the accord, notwithstanding the commitments that are part of the text and that the United States signed on to. And yet opponents of the JCPOA, who typically depict Iran as being far less trustworthy than the United States, futz over the sunset clauses in that text as if they represent a major problem that will make the difference between Iran having and not having a nuclear weapon a decade from now. Their handling of this issue is one more indication of their argumentative dishonesty, with the sunset clauses being just one more aspect of the JCPOA that they can attack as a “flaw.” The standard of comparison they are implicitly using is an impossible-to-achieve formula in which the United States gets everything it would like on every issue. Meanwhile they hope that their listeners will not think about the real alternative to the JCPOA, which is the absence of an agreement and the absence of any special limitations on Iran.

Follow-on Negotiations 

There has been some talk about negotiation to extend the time limits in the JCPOA. Great—sit down at a table and have at it. The same goes for those other issues involving Iran that opponents of the JCPOA keep talking about even though the JCPOA was never intended to deal with them. At least re-opening a channel of communications could help in managing other problems. This was a side benefit of the negotiations on the JCPOA, which established a useful channel at the foreign-minister level that now, because of U.S. lack of interest, is closed. But any new negotiations must build on diligent observance by all parties of the commitments in the JCPOA. Reneging on any of those commitments would create the worst possible environment for trying to reach new deals on time limits, ballistic missiles, or anything else.

It may be too early, however, to complete an extension agreement for the JCPOA. Would the United States be willing to make commitments now about what its policy toward Iran will look like more than 10 years from now? Iran will have similar hesitancy about making commitments that far in the future, and it is not just going to knuckle under to new and farther-reaching demands. As with any international bargain, one has to give something to get something.

Related to the arguments about the sunset clauses, opponents of the JCPOA like to spin a story of Iranian leaders having a deceitful and very long-term strategy whereby they sucked the P5+1 into acceding to an agreement with time limits, after the expiration of which Iran will quickly build a bomb. Not only is there no evidence whatsoever of any such Iranian thinking; the story is not even plausible. If leaders in Tehran really did see a nuclear weapon as being more in their national interest than not being an economic and political pariah, then accepting an accord in which they dismantle and disable large parts of their nuclear program, significantly lengthening the “breakout time” for making a nuke, and subject themselves to the most intrusive international nuclear monitoring arrangement ever, would be a very, very weird way to implement such a strategy. If a nuclear weapon is somewhere in Iran’s future, it won’t be because of such supposed and ridiculously unrealistic Iranian thinking but rather because the bargain that prevents an Iranian nuke will have been overturned by a U.S. administration reneging on U.S. commitments and destroying the JCPOA.

Photo: Negotiating the JCPOA.

Paul Pillar

Paul R. Pillar is Non-resident Senior Fellow at the Center for Security Studies of Georgetown University and an Associate Fellow of the Geneva Center for Security Policy. He retired in 2005 from a 28-year career in the U.S. intelligence community. His senior positions included National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia, Deputy Chief of the DCI Counterterrorist Center, and Executive Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence. He is a Vietnam War veteran and a retired officer in the U.S. Army Reserve. Dr. Pillar's degrees are from Dartmouth College, Oxford University, and Princeton University. His books include Negotiating Peace (1983), Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy (2001), Intelligence and U.S. Foreign Policy (2011), and Why America Misunderstands the World (2016).

SHOW 7 COMMENTS

7 Comments

  1. Mr. Pillar’s last paragraph could have been strengthened by citing: [i] the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, reaffirmed in 2012 (the consensus position of all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies) concluding that Iran had no nuclear weapons program after 2003; [ii] the 2012 Israeli government report concluding that Iran has not yet decided whether to make a nuclear bomb; [iii] the New York Times report a month later that Mossad and the CIA agreed; [iv] the 23 March 2012 report by Reuters that: “[t]he United States, European allies and even Israel generally agree on three things about Iran’s nuclear program: Tehran does not have a bomb, has not decided to build one, and is probably years away from having a deliverable nuclear warhead; [v] the 2015 leaked Mossad cable to South African government concluding that Iran’s nuclear work was aimed to “working to close gaps in areas that appear legitimate [for peaceful purposes] such as enrichment reactors;” and [vi] the Israel Defense Force’s first publication in 2015 of a list of major military threats document that omitted any mention of an Iranian nuclear threat.

    Opponents of the JCPOA should never be permitted to spin their Iranian Nukes Myth in public without being confronted with those facts.

  2. Many of Iran’s opponents have been swayed by Benjamin Netanyahu who has made much money through his nuclear waste cleaning business by scaring customers away from Iran’s nuclear waste cleaning program with his vague nuclear talk. In many instances I have seen Netanyahu lie by leading people to believe that Iran has nuclear weapons. Iran’s nuclear waste cleaning facility can never be used for nuclear bomb strength material because the building to cleaning qualities was so great that additional work cannot be done- I worked with them until completion, same with Netanyahu’s nuclear waste cleaning facility. As to the accomplishments of the previous administration there were none except for empty talk up to the reelection, then nothing because Obama had nothing to gain then.

  3. Bobby, it’s not just Iran’s opponents. Search for an article reporting on a poll in the Times of Israel from July 31, 2012 entitled “80% of Americans think Iran’s nuclear program threatens the US”. The Iranian Nukes Myth has been very effective propaganda.

  4. 1. I was not trying to limit the influence only where it started to spread. 2. If you believe the Times of Israel you are a fool or a liar.

  5. My interpretation, for the most part, of what’s being stated or communicated by the west, the US in particular, and their intentions behind the communication are usually two different things! The context of this article is a good example:
    Trump and his clans, neocons, Israel and MIC are saying that the JCPOA is not a good deal and it has to be either renegotiated or scrapped all together! Well that’s what’s being communicated! How about their intentions behind this communication?
    IT IS NOT because JCPOA prevents Iran from developing a nuclear bomb, which Iran never wanted to begin with, but it is because JCPOA is an obstacle and it prevents the US and the Zionists from continuing their warmongering efforts and scaring of Iran’s neighbors mostly the Arab states into buying more expensive but useless arms! After all there are many nuclear warheads already in Israel, Pakistan and India and in reality the US doesn’t give a shit if Iran had a few bomb of their own! In fact the west always wanted Iran to have a few bombs. In that case Iran would’ve been an enemy of the west until the end of time!
    One may ask why the US & Russia are interested in having contracts to build nuclear power plants in Saudi Arabia and Jordan? There in lies the intentions to sell more arms and build more nuclear power plants and etc. It’s all about money!

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