Thread by @tparsi

🧵
Important to understand how Pence's statement undermines the US bargaining position in Vienna.

Iran is told by both parties that the US can't be relied on.

GOP says they will rip up the JCPOA.
DEMs say they can't tie the hand of the next President.

So what does this do?>>

https://twitter.com/TimesofIsrael/status/1501295709135392771

2. It means that any carrots the US puts forward in the talks are devalued precisely because we are explicit about their lack of durability.

So the US has to offer more to achieve the same because of this lack of trustworthiness.
>>

3. As I have written elsewhere, this has been a major challenge in the nuclear talks. Being unreliable does not put you in a good position to ask for a "longer and stronger" deal... >>

msnbc.com/opinion/our-af…

4. At the same time, Pence is not lying. If the GOP wins in 2024, I see only two scenarios.

Either the US walks out of the deal a la Trump.

Or it adopts an ambiguous position in which it doesn't commit to staying and flirts with leaving.

In both cases, the JCPOA dies >>

5. In the latter case, the US injects so much uncertainty into the situation that international businesses will begin exiting the Iranian market. As such, UNCERTAINTY IS A DE FACTO SANCTION.

With Iran not getting what it has been promised, Tehran will likely quit the deal or >>

6... it will reduce its obligations, as it did from 2019 and onward. But this time around, the JCPOA would likely not be able to take that pressure without collapsing.

>>

7. Many in DC still think of how to "strengthen" the deal once it is revived.

But I fear very few have internalized how weak the Western bargaining position is: One can't ask for more when one simultaneously admits that no American promise can be kept longer than 4 years... //