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The superspreaders behind top COVID-19 conspiracy theories

By DAVID KLEPPER, FARNOUSH AMIRI and BEATRICE DUPUY

https://apnews.com/article/conspiracy-theories-iran-only-on-ap-media-misinformation-bfca6d5b236a29d61c4dd38702495ffe

As the coronavirus spread across the globe, so too did speculation about its origins. Perhaps the virus escaped from a lab. Maybe it was engineered as a bioweapon.

Legitimate questions about the virus created perfect conditions for conspiracy theories. In the absence of knowledge, guesswork and propaganda flourished.

College professors with no evidence or training in virology were touted as experts. Anonymous social media users posed as high-level intelligence officials. And from China to Iran to Russia to the United States, governments amplified claims for their own motives.

The Associated Press collaborated with the Atlantic Councils Digital Forensic Research Lab on a nine-month investigation to identify the people and organizations behind some of the most viral misinformation about the origins of the coronavirus.

Their claims were explosive. Their evidence was weak. These are the superspreaders.

FRANCIS BOYLE

WHO HE IS: A Harvard trained law professor at the University of Illinois, Boyle drafted a 1989 law banning biological weapons and has advised the nation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Palestinian Authority.

Boyle has no academic degree in virology or biology but is a longstanding critic of research on pathogens. He has claimed Israeli intelligence was involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; that SARS, the swine flu and Ebola have been genetically modified; and that West Nile virus and Lyme disease escaped from a U.S. biowarfare lab. He has also claimed that Microsoft founder Bill Gates was involved in the spread of Zika.

COVID CLAIM: Boyle says the coronavirus is a genetically engineered bioweapon that escaped from a high-level lab in Wuhan, China. He maintains it shows signs of nanotechnological tinkering and the insertion of proteins from HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus. He alleges that U.S. researchers helped create it, and that thousands of doctors, scientists, and elected leaders are conspiring to hide the truth.

Boyle promoted his claim in an email to a list of news organizations and personal contacts on Jan. 24, 2020. That same day, he was interviewed on a podcast called Geopolitics and Empire. That podcast was cited by a little-known Indian website, GreatGameIndia, and went viral, with Boyles comments picked up and featured in Iranian-state TV, Russian state media, and fringe websites in the U.S. and around the world. Hes since repeated his claims on Alex Jones show Infowars.

EVIDENCE? Boyle bases his argument on circumstantial evidence: the presence of a Biosafety Level 4 lab in Wuhan, the fact that other viruses have escaped from other labs in the past, and his belief that governments around the world are engaged in a secret arms race over biological weapons.

Biosafety Level 4 labs - or BSL4 labs - have the highest level of biosafety precautions.

It seemed to me that obviously, this came out of the Wuhan BSL 4, Boyle told The Associated Press, dismissing the accepted explanation that the virus emerged from the Wuhan market as completely preposterous.

A World Heath Organization team concluded it was extremely unlikely the virus escaped from the Wuhan lab, and other experts have said the virus shows no signs of genetic manipulation.

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GREATGAMEINDIA

WHAT IT IS: A website that was an early promoter of the theory that the coronavirus was engineered.

Its Jan. 26, 2020, story on Coronavirus bioweapon-How China Stole the Coronavirus From Canada and Weaponized It was picked up by far-right financial blog Zero Hedge and shared to thousands of social media users before it was promoted by conservative website RedStateWatcher and received more than 6 million engagements.

COVID CLAIM: GreatGameIndia claims that the virus, which has now killed more than 2 million people worldwide, was first found in the lungs of a Saudi man and then sent to labs in the Netherlands and then Canada, where it was stolen by Chinese scientists. The article relies in part on speculation from Dany Shoham, a virologist and former lieutenant colonel in Israeli military intelligence.

Shoham was quoted discussing the possibility that COVID is linked to bioweapon research in a Jan. 26, 2020, article in the conservative U.S. newspaper The Washington Times. In that article, Shoham was quoted saying there was no evidence to support the idea that the virus has escaped from a lab, but GreatGameIndia did not include that context in its piece.

We do stand by our report, said website co-founder Shelley Kasli wrote in an email. In fact, recently Canadians released documents which corroborated our findings with Chinese scientists... A lot of information is still classified.

EVIDENCE? The coronavirus most likely first appeared in humans after jumping from an animal, a World Health Organization panel announced this month, saying an alternate theory that the virus leaked from a Chinese lab was unlikely.

Americas top scientists have likewise concluded the virus is of natural origin, citing clues in its genome and its similarity to SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome. Vincent Racaniello, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Columbia University, who has been studying the virus since its genome was first recorded, has said it is clear that the virus was not engineered or accidentally released.

It is something that is clearly selected in nature, Racaniello said. There are two examples where the sequence tells us that humans had no hand in making this virus because they would not have known to do these things.

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THE CENTRE FOR RESEARCH ON GLOBALIZATION

WHAT IT IS: The Montreal-based center publishes articles on global politics and policy, including a healthy dose of conspiracy theories on vaccines and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Its led by Michel Chossudovsky, a professor emeritus of economics at the University of Ottawa and a conspiracy theorist who has argued the U.S. military can control the weather.

The center publishes authors from around the world many of whom have advanced baseless claims about the origins of the outbreak. In February, for instance, the center published an interview with Igor Nikulin suggesting the coronavirus was a U.S. bioweapon created to target Chinese people.

The centers website, globalresearch.ca., has become deeply enmeshed in Russias broader disinformation and propaganda ecosystem by peddling anti-U.S. conspiracy theories, according to a 2020 U.S. State Department report which found that seven of its supposed writers do not even exist but were created by Russian military intelligence.

COVID CLAIM: While the center has published several articles about the virus, one suggesting it originated in the U.S. caught the attention of top Chinese officials.

On March 12, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian retweeted an article published by the center titled: Chinas Coronavirus: A Shocking Update. Did The Virus Originate in the US?

This article is very much important to each and every one of us, he posted in English on Twitter. Please read and retweet it. COVID-19: Further Evidence that the Virus Originated in the US.

He also tweeted: It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! US owe us an explanation.

The story by Larry Romanoff, a regular author at the center, cites several debunked theories, including one that members of the U.S. military brought the virus to China during the Military World Games in fall 2019. Romanoff concludes that it has now been proven that the virus originated from outside of China, despite scientific consensus that it did.

EVIDENCE? The World Health Organization has concluded that the coronavirus emerged in China, where the first cases and deaths were reported. No evidence has surfaced to suggest the virus was imported into China by the U.S.

Chossudovsky and Romanoff did not respond to repeated messages seeking comment. Romanoffs biography lists him as a visiting professor at Fudan University in Shanghai, but he is not listed among the universitys faculty. The university did not respond to an email asking about Romanoffs employment.

Romanoffs original article was taken down in the spring, but Zhaos tweet remains up.

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IGOR NIKULIN

WHO IS HE? A four-time failed political candidate, Nikulin is prominently quoted in Russian state media and fringe publications in the west as a biologist and former weapons inspector in Iraq who served on a U.N. commission on biological and chemical weapons in the 1990s.

COVID CLAIM: Nikulin argues the U.S. created the virus and used it to attack China. He first voiced the belief in a Jan. 20, 2020, story by Zvezda, a state media outlet tied to the Russian military. He appeared on Russian state TV at least 18 times between Jan. 27, 2020, and late April of that year.

Once the virus reached the U.S., Nikulin changed his theory, saying globalists were using the virus to depopulate the earth.

Nikulin has expressed support for weaponizing misinformation to hurt the U.S. in the past. On his website, he suggests claiming the U.S. created HIV as a way to weaken America from within. Russian intelligence mounted a similar 1980s disinformation campaign dubbed Operation INFEKTION.

If you prove and declare... that the virus was bred in American laboratories, the American economy will collapse under the onslaught of billions of lawsuits by millions of AIDS carriers around the world, Nikulin wrote on his website.

EVIDENCE? Nikulin offered no evidence to support his assertions, and there are reasons to doubt his veracity.

Former U.N. weapons inspector Richard Butler, for whom Nikulin claims to have worked, said he had no memory of Nikulin, and that his story sounded sloppily fabricated, and not credible.

No U.N. records could be found to confirm his employment.

In an exchange with the AP over Facebook, Nikulin insisted his claims and background are accurate, though he said some records from U.N. work were destroyed in an American bombing during the Iraq invasion.

When told that Butler didnt know him, Nikulin responded This is his opinion.

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GREG RUBINI

WHO HE IS: Greg Rubini is the name of an internet conspiracy theorist who claims to have high-level contacts in intelligence and listed his location on Twitter as classified, until he was kicked off the platform. His posts have been retweeted thousands of times by supporters of QAnon, a conspiracy theory centered on the baseless belief that Trump is waging a secret campaign against enemies in the deep state and a secret sect of satanic pedophiles and cannibals.

COVID CLAIM: Rubini has tweeted that Dr. Anthony Fauci created the coronavirus and that it was used as a bioweapon to reduce the worlds population and undermine Trump.

EVIDENCE? Rubinis doesnt appear to be the intelligence insider that he pretends to be.

Buzzfeed attempted to track down Rubini last year and determined it is the alias of a 61-year-old Italian man who has worked in marketing and music promotions. A previous version of his Twitter bio indicates he is a fan of classic rock and the films of Stanley Kubrick.

Attempts to reach Rubini online and through business contacts were unsuccessful.

Rubini has bristled at efforts to verify his claims. When a social media user asked: My question to you @GregRubini is, Where and what is your proof? Rubini responded curtly: And my question is: why should I give it to you?

Twitter suspended Rubinis account in November 2020 for repeated violations of its policies.

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KEVIN BARRETT

WHO HE IS: A former lecturer on Islam at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Barrett left the university amid criticism for his claims that the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were orchestrated by people linked to the U.S. and Israeli governments.

Barrett calls himself a professional conspiracy theorist, for want of a better term and has argued government conspiracies were behind the 2004 Madrid bombing, the 2005 London bombing, the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing and the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting.

COVID CLAIM: Barrett said he is 80% sure coronavirus was created by elements within the U.S. government as a bioweapon and used to attack China.

Iran was a secondary target, he has argued. Writing for Irans PressTV, he said the early outbreak in that country suggests that the Americans and/or their partners the Israelis... may have deliberately attacked Iran.

Barrett further detailed his views during an interview with the AP.

It seemed fairly obvious to me that the first hypothesis one would look at when something as extraordinary as this COVID pandemic hits, is that it would be a US bio-war strike, he said.

EVIDENCE? Barrett cited reports that the US warned its allies in November 2019 about a dangerous virus emerging from China. Barrett said thats long before authorities in China knew about the severity of the outbreak.

Official sources have denied issuing any warning. If the U.S. did know about the virus that soon, it was likely thanks to intelligence sources within China, which may have known about the virus as early as November 2019, according to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

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LUC MONTAGNIER

WHO HE IS: Montagnier is a world-renowned virologist who won the Nobel prize in 2008 for discovering HIV.

COVID CLAIM: During an April interview with the French news channel CNews, Montagnier claimed that the coronavirus did not originate in nature and was manipulated. Montagnier said that in the process of making the vaccine for AIDS, someone took the genetic material and added it to the coronavirus. Montagnier cites a retracted paper published in January from Indian scientists who had said they had found sequences of HIV in the coronavirus. AP made multiple unsuccessful attempts to contact Montagnier.

EVIDENCE: Experts who have looked at the genome sequence of the virus have said it has no HIV-1 sequences. In January, Indian scientists published a paper on bioRXIV, a repository for scientific papers that have not yet been peer-reviewed or published in a traditional scientific journal. The paper said that the scientists had found uncanny similarity of unique inserts in COVID-19 and HIV. Social media users picked up the paper as proof that the virus was engineered. As soon as it was published, the scientific community widely debunked the paper on social media. It was later withdrawn.

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SUPREME LEADER ALI KHAMENEI and HOSSEIN SALAMI

WHO THEY ARE: Khamenei is the second and current Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran. He has the final say on all matters of state, including the economy, military and health divisions.

Since being elected to office in 1981, Khamenei has maintained his skeptical view of the U.S. as Irans foremost enemy. The tensions between the two countries boiled over in 2018 when Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Iran nuclear deal and reimposed crippling sanctions. At the time, Khamenei remarked, I said from the first day: Dont trust America.

Hossein Salami was appointed by Khamenei as commander of Irans Revolutionary Guard in April 2019. He leads the countrys paramilitary force that oversees Irans ballistic missile program and responds to threats from both inside and outside the country.

COVID CLAIM: Salami declared on March 5, 2020, that Iran was engaged in a fight against a virus that might be the product of an American biological attack. On those grounds, Salami ordered a Ground Force Biological Defense Maneuver to test the countrys ability to combat a biological attack. Beginning March 16, the Ground Force, in close collaboration with the Health Ministry, began holding nationwide biodefense drills.

Khamenei was among the first and most powerful world leaders to suggest the coronavirus could be a biological weapon created by the U.S. During his annual address on March 22 to millions of Iranians for the Persian New Year, Khamenei questioned why the U.S. would offer aid to countries like Iran if they themselves were suffering and accused of making the virus.

Khamenei went on to refuse U.S. assistance, saying possibly (U.S.) medicine is a way to spread the virus more. Last month, he refused to accept coronavirus vaccines manufactured in Britain and the U.S., calling them forbidden. The Iranian Mission to the United Nations in New York did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

EVIDENCE: There is no evidence that the U.S. created the virus or used it as a weapon to attack Iran.

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Read this article:
The superspreaders behind top COVID-19 conspiracy theories - The Associated Press

Irans foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, sought to amplify the pressure on Mr. Biden this week during a visit to Russia, which, along with China, Britain, France and Germany, still honors the accord and has sought to preserve it. With the change of administration in the U.S. we have heard words but have seen no action, said Mr. Zarif.

He reiterated a threat by Iran to restrict visits by international nuclear inspectors a flagrant violation of the accord as of Feb. 21, under the law passed by Parliament, which followed the assassination in November of Irans top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. Iran has blamed Israel and the United States for the killing.

Mr. Bidens caution toward an opening with Iran is rooted in the antipathy that has dominated the U.S.-Iranian relationship since the 1979 Islamic revolution, the American hostage crisis and the severing of diplomatic relations. There is strong bipartisan support for a tough stand toward Iran, which the State Department has classified since 1984 as a state sponsor of terrorism, and is regarded by both Israel and Saudi Arabia, the closest American allies in the region, as a dangerous threat.

While Iran has done nothing to provoke a military confrontation with the United States since Mr. Bidens election, it has taken steps to at least get his attention. On Jan. 4, Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps seamen seized a South Korean ship amid a simmering dispute over South Koreas impounding $7 billion in Iranian oil revenue, frozen by American sanctions.

Just days before Mr. Bidens inauguration, Iranian media reported the conviction of an Iranian-American businessman, Emad Sharghi, on unspecified espionage charges. Mr. Sharghi joined at least three other American citizens of Iranian descent held in Iran, according to a list compiled by the Center for Human Rights in Iran, a New York-based advocacy group.

In a signal of Mr. Bidens own suspicions toward Iran, the American military said Wednesday that a B-52 bomber had flown over the Middle East for the third time this year and for the first time since he had become commander in chief. The B-52 operations, aimed at deterring Iran from any military provocations, had begun under Mr. Trump.

Mr. Biden also may be reluctant to re-engage with Iran until that countrys own internal politics signal some clarity. President Rouhani, who helped negotiate the nuclear deal, is now in the last six months of his final term. He has been severely criticized by hard-liners who could wield more power after elections in June.

Read the rest here:
Iran Presses Biden to Restore Nuclear Deal and Drop Sanctions - The New York Times

The USS Nimitz carrier has been pulled out of the region potentially easing heightened tensions with Tehran.

US President Joe Bidens administration has pulled an aircraft carrier out of the Gulf in a move to potentially ease tensions with Iran, which had soared under former President Donald Trump.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said on Tuesday the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group had sailed from the US militarys Central Command in the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific Command region.

Kirby did not confirm reports the Nimitz was headed back to the United States after some nine months at sea.

But he indicated that, after the Trump administration ramped up the US military presence in the Gulf, the Biden administration did not see keeping the carrier there as necessary for US security needs.

Kirby declined to discuss the Pentagons current assessment of a potential Iranian military threat to US bases or Gulf allies.

However, he said: We dont make decisions like this lightly.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin believes that we have a robust presence in the Middle East to respond to any threat, Kirby added.

The secretary was mindful of the larger geostrategic picture when he approved the movement of the carrier strike group from the Central Command area of responsibility to the Indo PACOM area of responsibility, he said.

Kirby would not say if the Nimitz would be replaced in the region in the near future, noting the US Navy has a limited number of aircraft carriers.

Were constantly watching the threat. Were constantly trying to meet that threat with proper capabilities, he said.

The move came after the US reversed a decision last month to bring the aircraft carrier home from the Gulf, with the Pentagon saying due to recent threats by Iran, the USS Nimitz would stay in position.

Iran has conducted military exercises and war games in the past several weeks amid the heightened tension between Tehran and Washington and its regional allies, particularly Israel. Last month, Tehran carried out the fifth military drill in two weeks as the US flew nuclear-capable B-52 bombers over the Middle East.

Iran has also boosted its nuclear activity in the past few months, drawing concerns from the new US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who told NBC News on Monday Tehran could be months away from developing enough fissile material for a nuclear bomb.

But Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif rejected the allegations, saying Tehran was not seeking a nuclear weapon.

The Biden administration has expressed interest in reviving the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, from which Trump withdrew and slapped back punishing sanctions.

Iran has demanded Washington first lift the sanctions before talks could be resumed.

Speaking from Tehran on Wednesday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said that the nuclear deal would remain unchanged with only the original signatories to the deal taking part in any talks.

If they [the US] want it, they can come join. If they dont want it then they can go back to their own lives and well go about our business, said Rouhani.

Meanwhile, Israel has opposed the nuclear deal. Last month, a top Israeli general warned attack plans against Iran were being revised and said any US return to the 2015 nuclear accord with Tehran would be wrong.

See the rest here:
US moves carrier from Gulf in a sign of ebbing tensions with Iran - Al Jazeera English

Iran blizzard 1972 

Iran blizzard, the deadliest snowstorm in the history of the world that lasted for a week and killed 4,000 people, started on this day in 1972.

A week-long period of low temperatures and severe winter storms began on February 3, 1972, and left a trail of gruesome destruction, with several villages lifeless and inhabitable.

The snowstorm lasted for a week and dumped more than 9.8 feet of snow across rural areas in northwestern, central, and southern Iran.

According to reports, the city of Ardakan was among the hardest hit. The areas of Kakkan and Kumar reported no survivors.

On the last day of the snowstorm, rescue helicopters were dispatched to reach several regions that were buried under snow. First-aid workers mobilised in large numbers found corpses buried under the snow.

According to Associated Press reports, many rescue workers dug up the village of Sheklab for two days, burrowing through 8 feet of snow, before finding 18 dead bodies.

Unfortunately, no one from the village survived

"Virtually all Irans 1,636,000 sq km (631,000 sq mi) landmass vanished beneath a covering of snow that was so deep in places it literally buried thousands of people, many of whom sat tight in houses that turned into freezing death-traps long before a slow thaw revealed the true horror of this extraordinary happening," Devastatingdisasters.com wrote about the incident.

The Iran Blizzardtops NOAA's (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) list of top global weather, water, and climate events of the 20th century.

The second deadliest blizzard in human history took place in Afghanistan in 2008. It killed an estimated 926 people.

Read more from the original source:
This day in history: The deadliest blizzard ever that killed 4,000 in Iran started on Feb 3, 1972 - Times Now

Editors Note: One of President-elect Bidens most pressing foreign policy questions will be whether, and how, to reengage with Iran over its nuclear program. American Enterprise Institutes Kenneth Pollack argues that hopes to negotiate a better agreement are, for now, unrealistic and that the window for action will not be open for long.

Daniel Byman

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Despite the welter of conflicting actions and statements coming from senior Iranian leaders, it seems that Tehran would welcome a quick return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the Obama-era nuclear agreement, by the incoming Biden administration. However, Iran appears to be signaling that the opportunity to do so will be brief, and if the United States does not immediately resume compliance with the terms of the original agreement, that window will close quickly and perhaps permanently. The Biden administrations best approach will be to pursue complementary near-term and long-term strategies simultaneously to bring Iran back into compliance with the limits on its nuclear program while raising the stakes of Tehrans adventurism in the region and paving the way to a follow-on agreement.

The Signal in the Noise

Irans leaders have made a number of statements and taken several actions that have created confusion regarding their likely response to an offer by the incoming Biden administration for both parties to return to the terms of the 2015 JCPOA. Five key statements and actions provide the greatest insight into Irans likely course of action:

Taken together, these signs suggest that Iran is trying to welcome Americas return to the original JCPOA, while warning it against any effort to expand or add on to that deal.

Khameneis statement is the most important by far. Not only is he Irans ultimate decision-maker, but he also has been hypercritical of the JCPOAwhich has raised the prospect that he might be uninterested in returning to it even if the Biden administration is. His remarks in December indicate that he wants economic relief in exchange for returning to the agreement and probably hopes that this will placate the tens of millions of Iranians unhappy over not just the impact of U.S. sanctions but also the pandemic and Irans long-standing corruption and mismanagement. Indeed, Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh told the Majlis on Dec. 13 that he expected Iran to quickly reach 2.3 million barrels per day of oil exports as soon as the United States lifts sanctionsa major jump from the 500,000-600,000 barrels per day it has been exporting over the past few months. Such a public statement also speaks to the desire of Irans leaders to reassure their country that help is on the way.

These various suggestions also indicate that the key issue for Khamenei and other Iranian leaders is not reentry into the agreement, but the prospect that the United States will seek to expand the terms of the JCPOA or negotiate a follow-on pact that would further restrict Irans nuclear program. That is a reasonable concern on their part since President-elect Biden has made no secret of his desire to engage in negotiations and follow-on agreements to tighten and lengthen Irans nuclear constraints, as well as address the missile program. It is that prospect that Tehran appears determined to foreclose ahead of time.

Irans hard-liners largely hate the JCPOA, and they have consistently opposed it on the basis that it was too generous to the United States and too disadvantageous to the Iranians. Khamenei may not want to force them to accept a new deal that imposes even more restrictions on Iran, or he may simply agree with them.

Alternatively or additionally, Khamenei may not feel there is anything else the United States can offer him to make a revised JCPOA or a follow-on agreement worthwhile for Iran. Khamenei always saw the JCPOA as a simple transaction between the United States and Iran: ending sanctions for accepting nuclear constraints. He may believe that the JCPOA already gives him everything he wants or everything he can realistically expect from the United States, more so since it seems highly unlikely that the U.S. Congress would repeal any of the sanctions legislation on Iran. And the U.S. sanctions pertaining to Irans support for terrorism, human rights abuses, and the like will probably remain in place regardless of any further concessions Tehran might make on its nuclear program.

Consequently, the Rouhani and Khamenei statements should be seen as affirmations that Iran would rejoin the JCPOA on its original terms if the United States did the same. The Majlis bill complements this in Iranian eyes as a marker that the regime is uninterested in lengthy negotiationsthe kind that would be required for a revision of the JCPOA or a follow-on agreement. And the new enrichment activity and the construction at Fordow and Natanz are probably meant to put further pressure on the United States to return to the original deal quickly, lest the Iranians expand their nuclear facilities in ways that Washington would find alarming.

The Narrow Window

All of this suggests that the time frame for bringing Iran back to the JCPOA might be very tight. First, if the analysis of the various, seemingly contradictory Iranian statements above is correct, then if the Biden administration were to insist on trying to renegotiate the terms of the JCPOA or negotiating a follow-on agreement before resuming U.S. compliance with it, the Iranians might walk away from the entire agreement. That seems to be what they are signaling, although that might just be a bluff.

Even though Rouhani and the moderatesand apparently even Khameneiwould prefer to see the JCPOA reinstated and the sanctions lifted, there is reason to believe that this is a preference, not a necessity. Khamenei in particular may be willing to weather the sanctions indefinitely if he does not get his way.

Iran has already withstood the sanctions for three years without caving in to the demands of the Trump administration, and Tehran may be ready to hold out longer if its only alternative is to agree to terms it finds unacceptable. Khamenei has repeatedly agreed with the hard-liners that the United States should not have been trusted to keep the terms of the original agreement. Irans hard-liners have always seen the countrys economic health as less important than its security, ideological purity and nationalist aspirations. Many of them seem to prefer an autarkic resistance economy to Rouhanis policy of nuclear cooperation with the West.

Moreover, Irans presidential elections loom in June 2021, and they do not bode well for lengthy negotiations over the JCPOA. Although Iranian presidential elections are incredibly unpredictable, what evidence we do have strongly indicates that a hard-liner will succeed Rouhani. Before the 2020 Majlis elections, Irans Council of Guardians disqualified more than 50 percent of those who applied to run for election, including 75 percent of the members of the outgoing assembly and virtually all of the reformist and moderate candidates. The favoritism toward the various hard-line factions was so outrageous that the reformists called for a boycott of the elections, resulting in the lowest turnout in Iranian history. There is no reason to expect anything different from the presidential elections.

Removing Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif from Irans internal conversation and replacing them with hard-liners is likely to be equally problematic for U.S.-Iran negotiations down the line. Given the hard-line dominance of the rest of the Iranian regime, it is unclear who would even make the argument in favor of such negotiations during Tehrans deliberationslet alone argue for further compromises to get an agreement.

In addition, whatever the Biden administration does, a hard-line Iranian leadership is likely to spin it to justify discontinuing negotiations with Washington. If the United States returns to the JCPOA, Irans hard-liners are likely to argue that Tehran got everything that Khamenei wanted and does not need anything else. And if the United States hasnt rejoined the deal by that point in time, Irans leadership would probably conclude that the United States is not interested in doing so and is only interested in squeezing more out of the Iranians than they are willing to give.

The Long and the Short of a New American Approach

If the Biden administration is going to navigate the obstacle course that Tehran is trying to lay out for it, it is going to have to employ differing but complementary short-term and long-term approaches to Iran. This will be difficult, both because shifting from one approach to the other requires knowing when to do so and because changing gears will require the administration to devote more energy and effort to the Iranian nuclear problem than it probably would like given the vast range of other problems the United States already faces.

First and foremost, the new administration will need to negotiate a quick return to the original terms of the JCPOA and temporarily set aside any ambitions of getting a follow-on agreement for now. Americas first need is to get the Iranians to cease and desist from their nuclear activities in violation of the JCPOA because these are undermining both the agreement and the wider security of the region. Moreover, doing so is the best way to change the harmful narrative created by President Trump that the United States is the rogue state, unwilling to abide by the terms of an international agreement (and a U.N. Security Council resolution). The rest of the world needs to understand that this is a different administration and that Iran is the problem, not America.

Nevertheless, quickly rejoining the JCPOA will almost certainly require the United States to forgo its desire to improve it. That would instead have to become a longer-term goal. And for that to happento get the Iranians to agree to new negotiations, let alone get them to agree to a more restrictive follow-on agreementthe United States would have to develop new leverage against Tehran.

That might include the threat of reimposing sanctions, but it probably shouldnt. First, it will not help Americas international support to once again renege on the original agreement or even to threaten to do so. That would, in turn, make it hard to get the international support for sanctions that helped Obama get an agreement where Trump failed. Second, at the most practical level, reimposing the sanctions was not enough to get Tehran to agree to renegotiate the JCPOA with Trump. There is no reason to believe it would create greater success for Biden.

Thus, to get such a follow-on agreement, Biden would have to manufacture more leverage against Tehran than Trump did with his maximum pressure campaign. The only realistic way is to do the one thing that Trump refused to do. The one thing that appears to be dearer to Irans hard-liners than a flourishing economy (other than threatening regime change) is their creeping dominance of the Middle East. Biden would have to halt the expansion of Iranian influence across the region and probably start to roll back the gains that Tehran has made in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and the Gulf over the past 12 years.

On the plus side, containing and rolling back Iranian expansionism is also what all of Americas regional allies and many of its global allies want most from the United States, although the latter seek a more restrained version than the former.

Indeed, at its broadest level, such a policy should be designed to reengage with the problems of the Middle East and shore up the United Statess regional allies across the board to prevent Iran from picking off any more of them, while giving them the strength and confidence needed to reform domestically and refrain from dangerous foreign adventures (like the Saudi and Emirati intervention in Yemen).

Rhetorically, it would require President Biden early on to publicly reaffirm Americas commitment to the Carter Doctrine and its Reagan Corollary, which pledge the United States to defend its Gulf allies, including by responding to Iranian attacks on Gulf oil exports in ways that Trump would not. In particular, Trumps refusal to respond to Iranian attacks on oil tankers carrying Saudi and Emirati oil in the summer of 2019 or the stunning Iranian drone attack on Saudi Arabias irreplaceable Abqaiq oil processing facility in September 2019 terrified Americas allies from Beirut to Jerusalem, and Rabat to Riyadh.

Militarily, reengaging the Middle East should not conjure images of the surge in Iraq. The current light U.S. military footprint is perfectly adequate. It just should not get much smaller. In an ideal world, it would also be better to bring U.S. troop levels in Iraq back up to about 5,000 and in Syria, to 2,000the right numbers for the actual missions, and the size of those forces before Trumps gratuitous, politically motivated troop cuts.

In the economic realm, it would be enormously helpful to commit at least $1 billion to help Iraq avert impending financial disaster. Likewise, Jordan looks like Irans next target, and an additional $300-$500 million for Amman would go a long way toward shoring up the Hashemite monarchy. American diplomats could also use the prospect of additional aid to help countries such as Bahrain, Morocco and even Egypt push ahead with their sluggish reform agendas.

None of this will break the bank, even in these unprecedented times. All of it will be enormously helpful in allowing the United States to help its allies withstand Irans regional offensive and to threaten that which Irans hard-liners cherish most, their sway across the Arab world. For better and worse, such modest American reengagement with the Middle East is the only realistic way for the Biden administration to acquire the leverage it would need to bring a recalcitrant Iran around to agree to a follow-on to the JCPOA that addresses the weaknesses in the original agreement.

And that would allow Biden to leave the situation in the Middle East better than what he inherited and better than what he was able to accomplish the last time around, when he was vice president and saddled with a similar set of problems in this difficult part of the world.

Read more from the original source:
Prospects for U.S.-Iran Relations at the Start of the Biden Administration - Lawfare