A Necessary Tradeoff to Salvage the JCPOA

The removal of the FTO designation has just become the latest excuse for rejecting a diplomatic solution to the nuclear issue.

Esfandyar Batmanghelidj explains why removing the Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) designation for the IRGC won’t change very much in practice, but it is still needed to facilitate the revival of the nuclear deal:

The FTO designation was a non-nuclear sanctions measure imposed to make nuclear diplomacy more difficult. If removing the designation is necessary to secure the tremendous national security benefits of the JCPOA, then doing so is justified. In fact, failing to remove the designation would undermine the efficacy of US sanctions policy because it would prove that presidents can tie the hands of their successors in ways that make diplomacy nearly impossible to conduct.

Iran hawks openly admitted during the Trump years that they were seeking to create additional obstacles to U.S. reentry to the agreement, and that included the FTO designation. It is important to understand that removing this designation doesn’t lift all the other sanctions that still apply to the IRGC and associated entities, so it is a largely symbolic concession that helps to restore things as much as possible to the way things were before the U.S. reneged on the deal.