United States President Joe Biden speaks after signing an ordinance on American manufacturing on January 25, 2021 in the South Court Auditorium of the White House Complex in Washington, DC.
Drew Angerer | Getty Images
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – Iran and the US are in a stalemate.
President Joe Biden’s administration wants to revive the 2015 nuclear deal but is demanding changes from Tehran before lifting the heavy sanctions imposed on the country by the Trump team.
In the meantime, Iran wants Washington to step up its game and take the first step. He refuses to budge until these sanctions are lifted.
But the Biden government took a big step on Thursday and, together with European partners, offered to resume talks with the Iranians for the first time in four years.
“The United States would accept an invitation from the High Representative of the European Union to attend a meeting … to discuss a diplomatic route to Iran’s nuclear program,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Ned Price said in a statement.
The Biden team also reversed efforts by the former Trump administration to reimpose UN sanctions on Iran. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a call on Thursday that European ministers would work with them to restore the 2015 agreement, which he described as “a major achievement of multilateral diplomacy” according to a report in the New York Times.
It remains unclear whether Iran will agree to the talks.
Iran had previously set a deadline of Sunday, February 21, and promised that if the oil and banking sanctions are not lifted by then, the United Nations nuclear inspectors will be expelled, thereby reducing outside access to its facilities ends.
Political brinkmanship raises questions about Biden’s plans to save a deal that has been effectively life-sustaining since former President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the United States in 2018.
“Much harder to get to”
The Iranian nuclear deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), was spearheaded by the Obama administration and included several other world powers. It lifted international sanctions against Iran and offered the country 83 million in economic relief in return for limiting its nuclear program, which included mandatory inspections by the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Any removal of IAEA inspectors “would make it much more difficult to reach an agreement. Without mechanisms to oversee the Iranian nuclear program, distrust of the US and the remaining parties of the JCPOA would deepen,” wrote Torbjorn Soltvedt, MENA chief analyst at Verisk Maplecroft in a research report this week.
The ultimatum is intended to force Washington to act. But it could backfire, says Behnam ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
Iran’s deadline threat is said to “increase the risks and fears in Washington about the nuclear program. Risks and fears that Tehran hopes Washington will alleviate through concessions and early sanction easing,” Taleblu told CNBC.
But the heightened nuclear violations – even under Biden – “could help push Europe towards Washington, which now has limited Iran policies,” he warned.
And the Islamic Republic did not hold back from violating the parameters of the agreement following Biden’s election, which former JCPOA negotiators have described as “provocative” and “serious”. The stakes have risen since May 2019, a year after the Trump administration pulled out of the deal and began to sanction the country for so-called “destabilizing regional behavior”.
The Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei speaks on the occasion of the anniversary of the Qom protests in 1978 in Tehran, Iran on January 8, 2021 via a live broadcast on state television.
Anadolu Agency | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
Tehran’s most recent measures have included increasing uranium enrichment and inventory levels beyond the limits set in the deal. This month, the IAEA inspectors confirmed that they had found a small amount of uranium metal, which can be used to build the core of a nuclear bomb, in one of Iran’s nuclear facilities – but Tehran insists that it is used for nuclear power development.
Iranian officials have previously stressed that the violations are reversible once Washington offers sanctions relief.
That relief is unlikely, however, once Biden’s goals with the deal are unsupported by much of Congress and his team wants to avoid looking at Iran “gently”.
A batch of chicken?
According to Sanam Vakil, an Iran expert and deputy head of the MENA program at Chatham House, this is not as much of a chicken game as it seems.
“It’s not really a chicken game. It’s really about the Biden administration figuring out how to go about it and how to go about it and how to go about it, and that the domestic troubles in the US are what could have been a quicker reentry , really disabled, “she said.
And the stalemate, Vakil believes, is more of a debate about the order in which certain concessions are made.
“What we are seeing in the public domain is a debate about sequencing,” she said.
“The Iranians are saying in public: ‘We need you to lift all sanctions before we do anything.’ And of course they will say they have limited confidence in the process right now because they need to know where the US stands, what the US red lines are. “
All eyes on the election of Iran
Henry Rome, regional analyst at Eurasia Group, says the Biden government is considering “making a first gesture towards Iran to demonstrate commitment to returning to the JCPOA and getting Iran to enter negotiations without significant influence the US to lose “.
Such a move would be largely symbolic, but could include lifting sanctions against individuals, removing U.S. objections to an IMF loan, or facilitating humanitarian trade.
“If the US offers a concrete sign of progress before that date (February 21), it could be enough for the Iranian leadership to distort these terms,” Rom said.
Ultimately, far more important to the survival of the US-Iran deal and relations is what happens on June 18 – the Iranian presidential election, where a far tougher and anti-American leader could be elected.
The preparations for this election “will give a clearer indication of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s willingness to support another serious effort to reach an agreement,” Verisk’s Soltvedt said.
“A previous deal between Iran and the US is a distant prospect and the risk that Khamenei will deviate from the JCPOA this year will remain high.”
