Ahead of the resumption of indirect negotiations with the US to revive the nuclear deal, Tehran is engaging with the remaining participants of the JCPOA — Russia, China, France, Germany, and Britain.
In recent days, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian has spoken by phone with his counterparts from each country to discuss the talks that will resume on November 29th. Ali Bagheri, Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, is set to travel to France, Germany, and the UK this week.
On Tuesday, Amir-Abdollahian told France’s foreign minister that Tehran was displeased by the Biden administration’s latest round of sanctions, which came after Iran said it was ready to resume talks.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry has laid out three conditions for a JCPOA revival. They include the US taking responsibility for scrapping the deal, removing all sanctions on Iran that were imposed on Iran after the US left the agreement in 2018, and assuring that no other US administration would exit the deal again.
During the initial rounds of talks with Iran that lasted from April to June, the Biden administration refused to lift all Trump-era sanctions. This forced Iran to negotiate limited sanctions relief. The two sides reached a draft agreement that would lift most major sanctions, but Biden wasted the opportunity by refusing to guarantee that he would stay within the JCPOA during his term in office.
Western media is portraying Iran’s current stance as “hardline,” but the current situation is due to the Biden administration’s stubbornness during the initial negotiations with the government of former Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Iran’s new President Ebrahim Raisi ultimately favors a JCPOA revival but might not be as patient with the US as Rouhani was.
Biden has made plain his bad faith.
He will promise to remove only sanctions that he can immediately re-impose “for another reason.”
He is unrelenting in following the Trump play book. He just wants to pretend he is doing something different.
It is all just pandering to the hard right in Israel, for reasons of domestic US politics. It has nothing to do with nuclear, nor with US interests.