Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian told Al Jazeera that an agreement could be reached to restore the nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA, if the US is willing to lift sanctions.
Iran is calling for the US to lift the sanctions agreed to when the JCPOA was first negotiated and all the sanctions imposed since the Trump administration withdrew from the deal.
“Lifting sanctions means lifting all forms of sanctions stipulated in the nuclear agreement, and the sanctions that Trump reimposed contradict the terms of the agreement,” Amir-Abdollahian said in an interview that was broadcast Thursday.
Because the US withdrew from the deal once already, Iran wants guarantees that it won’t happen again. “We demand guarantees that include not imposing any new sanctions, and not reimposing sanctions after lifting them under any pretext,” Amir-Abdollahian said.
Indirect negotiations between the US and Iran to revive the JCPOA are ongoing in Vienna. Amir-Abdollahian said Iran is hearing “good words” from the US but has yet to see serious actions.
During earlier negotiations with the previous Iranian government, the US and Iran agreed on a draft deal that would lift most major sanctions. But President Biden scuttled the opportunity to salvage the JCPOA by refusing to promise that he would stay in the deal during his term in office.
When the current round of negotiations started at the end of November, the US demanded that Iran accept the draft agreement. But Tehran submitted its own draft proposals on sanctions relief and Iran’s nuclear responsibilities.
On Tuesday, the US State Department said “modest progress” had been made so far in Vienna, which was the first positive comment from Washington since the talks began. Both sides have said the conversations in Vienna are focused on sanctions relief.
Only the most reasonable demand in human history…
I absolutely agree. Stop pussy footing around and get the deal done. Then there will be an established framework and everyone can move forward.
If the Biden Administration wants to appear tough, they could put a snap back provision on the sanctions contingent on IAEA certification of enrichment activity decline in one year.
If it was limited to enrichment activity. But you know the chances of it remaining limited to that are zilch. Completely neutered or Israel will continue calling for military action.
Oh yes, they want to dismantle Iran’s ballistic missile program. Unlike their invisible-because-of-non-existent nukes, the missile arsenal controlled by the Revolutionary Guards IS a potential threat to Israel (not a threat of a first strike, of course, but overwhelming retaliation that would render Iron Dome useless).
Iran is more (potentially) economically powerful than Israel and the recently submitted GCC states combined. The oil price already crashed, the pandemic happened, freed Iran cash might have been nice but circumstances have moved on.
There is no way they are letting Persia resume its natural place in the geopolitical order if they can make America do anything about it.
The EU also has enough problems with Turkish independence to allow another major Rimland power, that’s not even a putative ally, to rise.
The disadvantage of Saudi and the Gulf States is they have to buy everything. They have precisely zero loyalty from their own subjects. Iran, on the other hand, is a real country with a mostly very loyal population. Shia Islam is a real motivating force and the Ayatollah as leader of the Islamic Republic turns it into a powerful national ideology. The West worked very hard to largely successfully crush Arab nationalism for fear that it might become a unifying ideology, now they’re trying to do the same with Iran, but they’ve hit a stumbling block as Iran has become capable of defending itself.
That is true, but Islamic ‘cancel culture’ will always generate dissidents. All those successful assassinations and sabotage, cannot but have had inside help.
In the few short years our own cancel culture has come to the fore, society has been polarized into raw crony competition for power that can only sort itself out into stark winners and losers, not a true republican democratic polity where everyone wins.
Iran’s people expected Ayatollah Khomeini to restore their democracy, not install Iran’s Ulema as the new ruling Royal Family.
Its possible that General Soleimani met a fate not unlike that of the other great Persian leader, General Surena. Like Surena, Soleimani’s head was delivered on a silver plate, it seems.
Soleimani wanted to win and drive the US from the Middle East; Iran’s leadership wanted a U.S. presence close to hold hostage. Someone may have taken advantage of this strategic disagreement.
The assassinations and sabotage are very minor in the grand scheme of things. An assassinated leader is almost always replaced by a younger, more intelligent, more determined protege – with the will and experience not to make the security errors that killed his mentor. Assassinated scientists, likewise, are replaced by younger, enthusiastic, open minded successors ready to try all the dangerous opportunities that the elder victim was afraid to pursue to create the weapons needed to defeat the hated enemy. Bring targeted for assassination drives progress, it doesn’t cause serious setbacks.
In the case of General Soleimani – note that they couldn’t get him in Iran, they had to target him in Iraq where America has plenty of ears.
Soleimani was often out of Iran, and assassinating him there would kind of be operationally compromising to the Iranian underground.
The Iraq visit was an off-the-cuff executive decision leaving Soleimani no time to make his usual security arrangements in depth.
Also, there’s little excuse to be so free and easy with civilian lives.
Heck, that’s not even considered an appropriate attitude for handling military lives, and soldiers sign up knowing the ultimate sacrifice may be asked off them.
Yes, its important to be realistic and pragmatic, and spell it out. You’re not wrong.
However, there’s a bigger picture to the big picture; the moral picture that can never be jaded.
Iraqi Hasd al-Shaabi leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis was also killed.
The two of them together, was just too irresistible for the U.S. to pass up.
For the US? No, for Trump, the man had zero self restraint. Killing Soleimani when he was invited to Iraq on a diplomatic mission shamed America.
And who set that up? Did Trump have the agency to do that?
Why would killing Soleimani be any less shameful than everything else the US has done wrong in the Middle East?
Because Soleimani wasn’t a random paramilitary, he was a top general. And this was not a covert assassination, it was an open attack, publically declared. And America is not at war with Iran, or Iraq – it was basically an act of war against both countries. This was the most shameful move by the USA since the invasion of Iraq.
Trump ordered it most likely because he thinks Soleimani challenged him in memes
https://www.businessinsider.com/soleimani-fought-trump-with-game-of-thrones-memes-before-airstrike-2020-1
So, the military all but mutinies against a Syrian pullout, but Trump can order the assassination of a leading foreign personage against all diplomatic sense and strategic calculation on a personal whim?
The death of Soleimani also wastes years of building a profile on the guy and becoming very familiar with him and his organization. The Deep State wouldn’t toss that on the careless say-so of any sitting President.
Trump is more than willing to take the credit, but its not creditable that he made the plan. It was a spoonfed decision.
My understanding of the way the pentagon and similar organisations work is that the president will have said he wants him taken out, the pentagon will have prepared a few different plans and emphasized the dangers, legal and diplomatic. They will have tried to discourage him, but fundamentally their job is to blow things up so they would not refuse. Then Trump will have said he accepts those risks, and told them to execute the plan he preferred. Most of the deep state would not have know of the plans at all until the news networks reported the murder.
The Pentagon at the highest levels would simply ignore or fail to facilitate orders they didn’t want to carry out.
A very loyal population kept in line by religious police and secret police, who crush any sort of dissent.
Saudi Arabia has had more repression, religious police & secret police, than Iran, and worse Sharia punishments. Yet it hasn’t made their population loyal.
Let’s see how fudge brain screws this one up.
Dude, Biden can handle Iran politics in his sleep.
(and he will, too…)
That would imply that there is something real to screw up. But I did like the description.
So, after nearly a year the Iranians are still asking for the basic minimum requirement of lifting the illegal harmful sanctions while Biden continues the Trump policy he criticized .Allegedly it is the adversaries of Iran who want the deal, but Iran is supposed to get nothing from it.
Those uppity Iranians, just not accepting their lowly place in the ‘rules based international order’.
Well, Biden will show them uppity!
Total farce. It’s amazing what people are willing to believe. The JCPOA is totally dead. This is just Biden continuing his campaign lie that he intended to rejoin it. It’s make work for the State Department while Biden and the neocons plan war in Ukraine, war in Iran, and war over Taiwan.