Question

US withdrawal from Iran nuclear deal
Discuss or comment on the given topic.

Answer 1

Much has been written about the reasons for the US withdrawal, and about its prudential character. I would rather like to briefly discuss the issue of how best to characterize this action taken by the US.  Due to the legally nonbinding character of the JCPOA, one cannot use legal language to describe states’ interactions around the agreement. One cannot, for example, look to the rules of treaty law found in the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties to assist with things like interpretation of the agreement, implementation, breach, or termination.  These rules apply only to treaties, i.e. legally binding international agreements. This makes an analysis of the meaning and proper characterization of its purported withdrawal tricky.