President unlikely to certify pact this week, triggering complex battle in Congress and Europe over ultimate fate of agreement

If Donald Trump decides this week to withdraw his endorsement of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, its fate and the potential for a major conflict will be determined by a complex battle in Congress.



No one is able to predict whether that struggle will lead to a reimposition of US sanctions, the collapse of the agreement and the rapid scaling-up of Iran’s nuclear programme. It could result in a compromise that leaves the deal alive but opens the way for a more combative policy towards Tehran on other fronts.

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“We are on a tightrope. We don’t know what will happen,” a western diplomat said.

The congressional contest will pit most Republicans against almost all Democrats, hawks against doves, and will be played out under rules drawn up for a completely different set of circumstances.

The Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act (INARA) of 2015 was designed for a situation in which Iran was breaking the international agreement signed in July of that year, and a US administration was trying to cover up Tehran violations as a means of preserving the accord.

The actual situation is one in which Iran is agreed by all signatories, including the US, to be abiding by its obligations, but the US president appears determined to kill off the deal regardless. To add another level of complication, neither the Republican majority nor the president wants to be seen as the assassin that inflicts the death blow.

Trump says he has made his decision and an announcement is expected on Thursday or Friday. Most signs are that he will not certify the deal, the Joint Comprehensive Programme of Action (JCPOA).

The president has changed his mind at the eleventh hour before and the UK has not given up. In a telephone call with Trump on Tuesday, British prime minister Theresa May “reaffirmed the UK’s strong commitment to the deal alongside our European partners, saying it was vitally important for regional security”, Downing Street said.

The British foreign secretary Boris Johnson insisted the UK regarded the deal as an historic achievement that had made the world a safer place. He reiterated this in calls with the US secretary of state Rex Tillerson and the Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif.

If such last-ditch appeals fall flat and Trump washes his hands of an agreement he has called “the worst deal ever negotiated”, INARA gives Congress 60 days to decide whether to reimpose sanctions.

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The vote can be passed in the Senate by 51 votes. The Republicans have 52 seats.

The Republicans have historically been hostile to Iran and multilateral agreements, but these are not normal circumstances. The party leadership in Congress does not want to be landed with a decision it thinks the president should make, taking up time it would prefer to go to tax cuts.

The picture is made muddier still by a bizarre exchange of insults between Trump and the Republican chair of the Senate foreign relations committee, Bob Corker.

Europe’s conundrum

For European diplomats, a lot will depend on Trump’s words and tone. The worst-case scenario would be a vituperative denunciation or an ultimatum to Iran to renegotiate – an option that Tehran, Moscow and Beijing have rejected – coupled with a challenge to Congress to reimpose sanctions.

“It’s hard to imagine a world where the administration signals that it’s going to decline to certify and it would like to see the reimposition of some or all sanctions – and Congress not acting,” said Richard Fontaine, the president of the Centre for a New American Security. “From a Republican point of view, would you want to take a position against the reimposition of Iran sanctions on the Hill, only to see the president do it anyway?”

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The renewal of sanctions would be a nightmare for the three European signatories – the UK, France and Germany – and for the EU, which acted as midwife for the agreement. All say they will stick by their obligations.

“We signed that deal and the [UN] security council endorsed it. The world took Americans’ word for what it was,” Germany’s ambassador to Washington, Peter Wittig, told the Guardian. “To unravel that would jeopardise US credibility and also the credibility of the west in the world.”

Wittig stressed that Berlin and other European capitals share US concerns about Iran’s missile programme, its role in Syria and Iraq and in sponsoring militants. “We agree on the need to confront Iran in the region, so let’s spit it out,” he said. “Let’s talk about a concerted strategy … on how to deal with Iran.”

Other European diplomats have said there is no sign of such a policy from the administration, which they say seems determined to take out on the JCPOA frustrations over its inability to curb Iranian influence in the region.

If the US walked out on the deal, it is unclear whether Europe could keep faith with it, even if it wanted to. Regulations dating back to 1996, aimed at preventing European companies from complying with US sanctions that run counter to EU foreign policy, have never been properly tested. Faced with a choice between doing business in Iran and in the US, the big European firms are unlikely to hesitate. It would be hard for the EU to punish them.

“The worst scenario we’ll get into is one where there is not enough pressure to force Iran to make concessions, but enough pressure to make them say this agreement isn’t working for us and reconsider the nuclear restrictions that are in place,” said Richard Nephew, a former principal deputy sanctions coordinator at the state department.

If Trump gives a thumbs-down, the best the deal’s supporters can hope for is that he does not call directly for new sanctions, while his secretaries of defence and state, who support the agreement, work with Congress to find a compromise. Part of such a fix would involve a modification of INARA so Trump is not asked to endure the humiliation of approving his predecessor’s agreement every 90 days.

Opponents are unlikely to give up. Instead, they are expected to mount one assault after another in Congress, goading Tehran to walk away. The deal could outlive the immediate crisis, but it will not be secure as long as its greatest detractor remains in the White House.