Top Iranian officials are demanding that President-elect Joe Biden lift sanctions and return to the nuclear deal in Iran before further negotiations can continue.
During his presidential campaign, Biden indicated his intention to return to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which provided Iran with sanctions relief and international investment in exchange for combating its nuclear program. President Donald Trump withdrew from the international agreement in 2018 and again imposed sanctions on the Persian Gulf nation and its leaders.
“What we are saying is that everything that happened under the Trump administration should go back to the era before Trump. We are serious about it,” Mahmoud Vaezi, chief of staff of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, told Iranian Tasnim News on Monday Agency said. Vaezi argued that all sanctions imposed under Trump’s administration should be lifted to improve ties with the US
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Shahriar Heydari, the deputy head of the Iranian parliament’s national security and foreign policy committee, shared a similar perspective with Iranian media on Sunday.
“If the brutal sanctions imposed on the Iranian nation under Trump are not lifted, the JCPOA will definitely be a loss to Iran,” Heydari said.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran has fulfilled these obligations, but the United States has withdrawn from this international agreement, and the Europeans have not fulfilled their obligations under pressure from the White House. [which] brought the JCPOA near destruction, “the Iranian official said. Heydari warned that US officials should not try to” buy more time “with negotiations before lifting the sanctions.
Newsweek Biden’s transition team reached out for comment but did not immediately respond. In September, Biden wrote an opinion piece for CNN in which the Trump administration’s Iran policy was a “dangerous failure,” adding that he would reach out to Tehran and provide a credible path back to diplomacy.
Former President Barack Obama joined forces with Iran, the European Union, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Russia and China in 2015 to sign the nuclear deal. The treaty has shown a significant shift in US-Iranian relations, which has not been formal diplomatic since 1980.
However, the resignation in tension was short-lived when Trump withdrew from the international agreement in May 2018, despite consistent reports from the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog showing that Iran was still complying with the agreement. The Trump administration has argued that the deal was bad for the US and allowed Iran to fund extremists throughout the Middle East. But if Trump wanted to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power, his policies have so far failed. Analysts believe Iran is within a few months of having nuclear-grade nuclear material, while it would take at least a year for Trump to take office.
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European signatories hope Biden approves his commitment to return to the international agreement. They have been consistent in their criticism of the Trump administration’s policy towards Iran, after working with China and Russia in efforts to save the JCPOA.
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said in December that he had urged Iran to be cautious about continued nuclear development, pointing out that it could prevent Biden’s government from returning to the 2015 agreement.
“To make an approach under Biden possible, there should be no more tactical maneuvers as we have seen a lot lately – they would do nothing but further undermine the agreement,” Maas said.