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WASHINGTON – Iran’s highest-ranking diplomat in the United States warned the Biden administration it “must act quickly” to return to the 2015 nuclear deal abandoned by President Joe Biden’s predecessor “because the window is closing” on Tehran’s deadline for Washington to lift economic sanctions.
Majid Takht-Ravanchi, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, made the comments in exclusive remarks to USA TODAY. They underscore the difficulty Biden faces in reversing one of former President Donald Trump’s signature foreign policy actions because while Biden has signaled his willingness to rejoin the landmark accord, both sides insist the other must act first.
“The party that needs to change course is the United Sates, and not Iran,” said Amb. Ravanchi, who helped negotiate the agreement that Trump withdrew the U.S. from in 2018.
Iran’s hardline-dominated parliament has set a Feb. 21 deadline for Biden to lift U.S. sanctions as part of a move back into the tattered, now-breached agreement known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA. If the U.S. fails to act, Iran says, it will halt inspections of its nuclear sites by the International Atomic Energy Agency – a key provision of the accord – and further boost uranium enrichment.
This would effectively bring Iran one step closer to the 90% enrichment level required for a nuclear weapon. Iran has been enriching at around 20%, also a violation of the accord, as part of its response to the U.S. exit from the deal.
Still, Biden’s new Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday, his first full day as the U.S.’s top diplomat, that Washington will only return to the deal once it is satisfied that Iran has come back into full compliance with the agreement. This means, in part, limiting uranium enrichment to just under 4%.
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Washington accuses Iran of escalating tensions through provocative acts such as seizing cargo ships in the Persian Gulf – a vital route for oil supplies – backing Iranian proxies who have repeatedly launched rockets at the U.S. embassy in Iraq, and imprisoning Iranian-Americans on false spying charges.
Blinken said the U.S. was a “long ways” from meeting Biden’s aspiration to rejoin the deal.
“Iran is out of compliance on a number of fronts, and it would take some time, should it make a decision to do so, for it to come back into compliance, and for us then to assess whether it was meeting its obligations. So, we’re not there yet, to say the least,” Blinken told reporters at a press briefing.
Notwithstanding Trump’s withdrawal from the accord, Iran counters that Washington, not Tehran, is behind recent escalating tensions. It points to the Pentagon’s killing of Iran’s top commander Gen. Qasem Soleimani in a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad in January last year, and the assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, its top nuclear scientist, outside Tehran in November. Iran’s government accuses Israel, with support from the U.S., of being behind Fakhrizadeh’s killing. Iran also insists, despite skepticism from the international community, that it is not interested in developing a nuclear weapon and that its nuclear activities are intended for civilian, peaceful purposes only.
Nassar Hadian, a professor of international relations at the University of Tehran who has close links with officials in Iran’s foreign ministry, predicted that both the U.S. and Iran would ultimately return to the nuclear deal as it existed under the Obama administration.
“Washington may not be happy about it, but it knows it’s the only game in town,” he said.
Biden risks domestic political blowback if he returns to the deal without gaining any new concessions from Iran.Â
Republicans in Congress, as well as some key Democrats, are pressing Biden to make the most of Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran. Under that policy, the Trump administration slapped hundreds of sanctions on Iran. Lawmakers say he should use that leverage to force Iran to curb its other malign activities, including its ballistic missile program and its support for terrorist proxy groups.Â
“I fear returning to the JCPOA without concrete efforts to address Iran’s other dangerous and destabilizing activity would be insufficient,” Sen. Bob Menendez, the incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told Blinken at his Jan. 19 confirmation hearing.
Menendez said there is bipartisan support for a “comprehensive diplomatic approach” that would also limit Iran’s other antagonistic activities.
Republicans have been far more vocal in their campaign to dissuade Biden from rejoining the deal.
“Unfortunately, the Iranian regime thinks it has successfully waited out the maximum pressure program that we have in place,” said Sen. James Risch, the top Republican on the foreign relations committee.
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