Stratfor, the private intelligence organisation, assesses that the global geopolitical environment in 2021 will be shaped by two factors: the trajectory of the COVID-19 pandemic and efforts by the Biden administration to restore collaborative relationships around the world.
On the vaccine front, Stratfor expects it will take most of 2021 for Western countries to vaccinate their populations, while the rollout in developing countries could go well into 2022.
On the Biden front, we can look at one relationship he is expected to prioritise – that with Iran, in particular the restoration of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) bestablished by the Obama administration when Biden was vice-president. The JCPOA tightly restricted what Iran could do within its nuclear program and established an intrusive IAEA inspection regime in return for the lifting of sanctions.
Parties to the JCPOA were Iran and the P5 + 1 (China, France, Russia, the UK and US + Germany) together with the EU. President Trump unilaterally withdrew the US from the agreement in 2018 at the urging of Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu, who claimed Iran had been covertly pursuing a nuclear weapons program. President Trump also restored US sanctions.
There were several adverse developments for Iran during 2020, including the killing by US drone of revered Iranian general and statesman Qassem Soleimani, the arrival of COVID-19, the sabotage of the Natanz nuclear facility, the normalising of relations between the Arab Gulf states and Israel, and the November killing of chief nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. Throughout the year, US sanctions continued to cripple the Iranian economy.
Read the article in The Canberra Times.