{"id":2198916,"date":"2022-09-08T10:54:21","date_gmt":"2022-09-08T10:54:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nknews.org\/koreapro\/?p=2198916"},"modified":"2023-04-05T16:11:38","modified_gmt":"2023-04-05T07:11:38","slug":"south-korea-set-to-lose-big-if-us-and-iran-cant-agree-on-new-nuclear-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/koreapro.org\/2022\/09\/south-korea-set-to-lose-big-if-us-and-iran-cant-agree-on-new-nuclear-deal\/","title":{"rendered":"South Korea set to lose big if US and Iran can\u2019t agree on new nuclear deal"},"content":{"rendered":"
Negotiations between the U.S. and Iran over Tehran\u2019s nuclear program are teetering on the edge of failure, and few are as anxious to know whether the two countries will strike another deal as South Korea.<\/span><\/p>\n Despite its American ally\u2019s long-standing suspicions over Iran\u2019s nuclear program, Seoul has managed to maintain economic relations with Iran and is keen to move past recent friction and resume trade with the oil juggernaut.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Resource-deficient South Korea needs to import energy to keep its industry going, and it gets the <\/span>vast majority<\/span><\/a> of that from the Middle East. South Korea was the <\/span>second-largest importer<\/span><\/a> of Iranian oil in March 2019, just before it cut imports as a consequence of the Trump administration\u2019s <\/span>withdrawal<\/span><\/a> from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal with Iran.<\/span><\/p>\n Seoul values this trade with Iran so highly that it reluctantly accept Tehran\u2019s cooperation with Pyongyang. But South Korea is unwilling to pay the price that would result from bucking U.S. sanctions, meaning the future of its ties with Iran depend in large part on the result of the ongoing nuclear talks.<\/span><\/p>\n LUCRATIVE TIES<\/b><\/p>\n To understand how much South Korea has to gain from another Iran nuclear deal, one need only look back at how the 2015 JCPOA opened the floodgates to expand cooperation.<\/span><\/p>\n Similar to today, U.S.-led sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program limited the extent to which Seoul could work with Tehran. By 2015, bilateral trade had dropped to <\/span>around a third<\/span><\/a> of what it was in 2011.<\/span><\/p>\n This was extremely regretful for Seoul: Iran had been crucial for South Korea\u2019s economy since they <\/span>established relations<\/span><\/a> in the early 1960s, following dictator Park Chung-hee\u2019s rise to power and his drive for industrialization.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Even though Tehran came to see South Korea\u2019s American ally as the \u201cGreat Satan\u201d following the Iranian Revolution, the mutually beneficial exchange of South Korean construction for Iranian oil <\/span>propelled the relationship forward<\/span><\/a> over the next few decades.<\/span><\/p>\n Only months after the JCPOA came into effect, then-President Park Geun-hye flew to Tehran for the first-ever South Korea-Iran summit in May 2016. After the meeting with her Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani, she walked away with provisional deals in construction and energy <\/span>worth $45.6 billion<\/span><\/a> \u2014 the highest ever from a single summit, <\/span>according to Seoul<\/span><\/a> at the time.<\/span><\/p>\n