President Joe Biden’s team made it clear in its earliest hours that a speedy return to the nuclear deal with Iran was unlikely – which could potentially prolong a foreign policy crisis that many in Washington had hoped to resolve quickly.
The Trump administration abandoned the agreement in 2018 and reintroduced severe economic sanctions against Iran, further slowing the country’s already struggling economy and hampering the Islamic Republic’s ability to fight the coronavirus. In spite of transgression, Tehran has deliberately exceeded the caps of its nuclear development instituted under the agreement, as a pressure tactic to make the US once again. The message of the regime was, in fact, that the US could act diplomatically or face Iran’s pressure on a nuclear weapon.
Tehran has never officially said it was looking for a nuclear bomb, but its actions have long been intended to be at least close to having one, and some estimates suggest that the country is only three months from reaching of a workable bomb would be if it were really decided to do so.
On the campaign trail, Biden said he would rejoin the 2015 treaty with Iran and other world powers, on one important condition: “If Iran adheres to the nuclear deal again, the United States will rejoin the treaty as a starting point for the next -on negotiations, ”Biden wrote in a September essay for CNN.
But just the last few days, hopes of a looming U.S. return to the deal have weakened, with three senior members of Biden’s team signaling that it may not happen immediately.
During her confirmation hearing Tuesday as director of national intelligence, Avril Haines addressed a question by sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) on Haines’ view on the US rejoining the nuclear deal. Her answer was somewhat surprising.
“I honestly think we’re still a long way from there,” she said. She added that Biden and his team would ‘also have to look at the ballistic missile issues’ – referring to Iran’s continued development of an advanced arsenal of ballistic missiles – as well as Iran’s other ‘destabilizing activities’ before rejoining the nuclear deal. .
Two Democratic assistants from the Senate texted me almost immediately after her remarks to share their displeasure. “Not a good answer from Haines,” one said. (The Senate confirmed Haines in her post on Wednesday.)
Later in the afternoon, the designated Foreign Minister, Antony Blinken, made similar comments. “We are a long way from there,” he said when he rejoined the agreement. “Then we’ll have to evaluate whether they really agree if they say they meet their obligations again, and then we take it from there.”
And during her first briefing on Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki confirmed the two remarks. “The president has made it clear that he believes the United States, through a follow-up diplomacy, should seek to extend and strengthen nuclear restrictions on Iran and address other issues,” she said. “Iran must resume compliance with significant nuclear restrictions under the agreement to continue.”
“The President has made it clear that he believes that through the next diplomacy, the US should seek to extend and strengthen the nuclear restrictions on Iran and address other issues of concern,” White House Press Sec. Psaki says of driver’s plan to deal with Iran pic.twitter.com/vWEtdQxo2c
– NBC Politics (@NBCPolitics) 21 January 2021
It is clear that Biden officials are on the same page as far as Iran is concerned, and they all indicate that the new team does not want to push for a quick accession to the nuclear deal. “That would be my interpretation of remarks by Haines, Blinken and Psaki,” Suzanne Maloney, an Iran expert and director of the foreign policy program at the Brookings Institution, told me.
It is possible that this is all a negotiation tactic, which from the outset gives a hard position to build in a winding space to compromise later. But it is also possible that this attitude could delay – or even condemn – the prospect of a return to the diplomatic path between two bitter opponents.
The road to a renewed Iran deal is full of pitfalls
Biden’s government may not want to move quickly, but the time to do something meaningful is running out.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Wednesday spoke on how to save the nuclear deal. His main message at his cabinet meeting was that the US – not Iran – should move first. “If Washington returns to the 2015 nuclear deal in Iran, we will also fully honor our obligations under the treaty,” he said. The ball is “now in the U.S. court,” he said.
The regime specifically wants the US to lift sanctions and thaw Iran’s foreign financial assets before agreeing to put back its latest nuclear developments.
This is a potentially important complication, and it will require quite a bit of negotiation for the two parties to agree on a series of events that are palatable to both. The problem is that Iran is going to have a presidential election this summer, and that Rouhani, who was president when the nuclear deal was signed, and who created much of his political future to make the deal happen, is stepping down will leave after his second and final term has ended. .
The next Iranian president may not be so likely to save the nuclear deal, which means Biden may only have a few months before the resettlement window closes.
“The expectation of Rouhani’s government is a speedy return” to the agreement, Tehran University’s Nasser Hadian, who is close to top government figures, told the New Yorker earlier this month. “If Biden does not act, all the major factions of Iran will urge Iran to expand all aspects of its nuclear program.”
But even if the US immediately wanted to return to the agreement and Iran complied with the terms, it would take a while to verify that Tehran had in fact turned its trajectory into a weapon, experts say. The UN’s watchdog, for example, would have to gain access to various facilities to check whether the Islamic Republic had abolished its uranium enrichment. This in itself can delay any return to the transaction.
Opinions differ on how bumpy the road to a re-entry with Iran will be. Some, like the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Behnam Ben Taleblu, say: ‘It would be wise [for the Biden administration] to wait ”to rejoin the agreement, especially since there may not be as much of a local constituency [in the US] compared to other cases. ”
Others, such as the Maloney of Brookings, believe the US will eventually rejoin the original Iran deal – not a revamped one – because the Biden team would rather focus on other global issues such as the pandemic or China. “It will not be shocking if the government decides to take what they can get and park this problem,” she told me.
How U.S. yields may soon strongly depend on Robert Malley, a former Obama administration official who is believed to be Biden’s Iran envoy. Experts tell me that he is likely to seek a quick solution to the Iraq issue, which could put him at odds with other leaders in the team.
Which means the future of America’s return to the Iran deal has not been determined, and could potentially become a controversial point in government. What used to seem like a foregone conclusion can therefore be anything but.