Iran in recent days has been hit by a new and deadly wave of the coronavirus pandemic. While it seemed the initial outbreak had waned, and after quarantine restrictions had been lifted, the morbidity rate has again accelerated to reach 3,000 new infections per day. More than 8,000 Iranians have died from the virus thus far. The center of the outbreak has moved from Tehran to the oil-rich Khuzestan Province in the country's south-west.
The resurgence of the outbreak has further ravaged Iran's already dilapidated economy due to the severe sanctions imposed by the American administration. These sanctions were tightened even more during the coronavirus pandemic under orders from US President Donald Trump, who even torpedoed a request from the Iranians to receive billions of dollars in emergency loans from the International Monetary Fund.
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Under these circumstances of immense distress and renewed street protests, in which photographs of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei were burned and government buildings torched on the anniversary of the death of the founder of the Islamic Revolution, Ruhollah Khomeini, it would have been reasonable for the ayatollah regime to at least consider Trump's proposal to return to the negotiating table to restructure the nuclear deal.
But the Iranians, predictably, did the exact opposite. Last weekend, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was quick to tell the US president to fix the "dumb bet" he made by withdrawing from the nuclear agreement and to repent.
Making matters worse, a secret report compiled by the International Atomic Energy Agency that leaked on Friday revealed the Iranians are continuing to openly violate the nuclear deal.
According to the report, the Iranians are enriching uranium to a purity of up to 4.5%, higher than the 3.67% allowed under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, and are above the pact's limitations on heavy water. And as of May 20, Iran had increased its total stockpile of low-enriched uranium to 1,571.6 kilograms (1.73 tons), up from 1,020.9 kilograms (1.1 tons) on Feb. 19. Tehran is also investing a great deal in developing faster, more advanced centrifuges for uranium enrichment.
What this means: Although this is still a lower level of enrichment than required for making a nuclear bomb, Iran's "breakout time" for assembling a bomb is now just several months –instead of the one full year as estimated when the nuclear deal was signed. There's also the suspicious fact that the Iranians continue to prevent IAEA monitors from visiting two facilities, where before signing the JCPOA they had hid nuclear materials necessary for building a bomb.
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Iran's policy of brinkmanship versus the US, which Khamenei has spearheaded with support from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, leans on three basic assumptions: The first is that Trump is entirely preoccupied with the coronavirus pandemic, the riots at home and the upcoming election, and won't hastily respond militarily to Iranian violations, which aren't limited to the nuclear sphere and are ongoing in the form of naval harassments in the Persian Gulf, help to Hezbollah and its proxy militias in Iraq and many other hostile activities.
The second assumption is that the US is isolated and lacks almost completely the help and support of its European allies on the matter. The third and perhaps most important assumptions the Iranians are making: It's possible that in a few more months a new president will be sitting in the Oval Office. Less militant, less sensitive to Tehran's efforts to undermine regional stability, and more naïve about the true intentions of the ayatollah regime to create nuclear weapons and strive toward the destruction of Israel. For these hopes to come to fruition, Iran must hold on, bet that time is on its side, and in the meantime suppress any and all attempts by freedom-seeking Iranians at home from raising their heads.
