The US has received plenty of criticism for acceding to Iran’s policy of hostage-led negotiation for which Tehran has plenty of form. But there are a number of very knowledgeable Middle East hands in President Joe Biden’s administration with significant experience in the demanding theatre of negotiations with Iran. They include Biden himself, who was Barack Obama’s vice president when the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was negotiated and signed. So, they are neither neophytes on this issue nor naive about the risks involved in achieving an obviously humanitarian outcome in this manner. Rather, to understand why the administration took this step it’s necessary to first understand how it viewed the detainee situation as part of its broader Iran policy.
First, the security priorities of both the Obama and the Biden administrations with respect to Iran have focused on counterproliferation. The JCPOA, as flawed as it was, represented the Obama administration’s belief that only a negotiated approach to limiting Tehran’s nuclear development program could work effectively. The unilateral trashing of the agreement under Donald Trump’s presidency provided the proof, if any was needed, of what Iran could do in the absence of any negotiated constraints on its program.
By contrast, Iran’s influence-peddling and military support for regional non- and semi-state actors represents a real, but nevertheless second-order, security priority. The prevailing political and social realities in countries such as Lebanon, Syria and Iraq mean that Iranian-supported groups are significant, if not the dominant political actors, and therefore eliminating Tehran’s influence is essentially impossible. Without changing the political system of the country or the behaviour of actors in that system, constraining Iran’s behaviour, rather than eliminating its influence, becomes the achievable short- and medium-term aim.
Read the article by Rodger Shanahan in The Strategist.