Biden’s return to Iran’s nuclear deal is becoming increasingly difficult

DUBAI, UAE: Iran and the United States face off.

President Joe Biden’s administration wants to reactivate the 2015 nuclear deal, but demands to see changes from Tehran before it lifts the heavy sanctions imposed on the country by the Trump team.

Meanwhile, Iran says it wants Washington to step up its game and take the first step, refusing to move until it lifts those sanctions.

Iran has set a deadline of Sunday, February 21, promising that if banking and oil sanctions are not lifted by then, it will block UN inspectors from accessing its nuclear facilities.

Political will raises questions about Biden’s plans to save a deal that has effectively been life-sustaining since former President Donald Trump withdrew from the United States in 2018.

The Iranian nuclear deal, also called the Joint Comprehensive Action Plan (JCPOA), was led by the Obama administration and involved several other world powers. It lifted international sanctions on Iran, offering the country 83 million in financial aid, in exchange for halting its nuclear program, which included mandatory inspections by the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Any withdrawal of IAEA inspectors “would make the agreement very difficult; without mechanisms to control Iran’s nuclear program, the distrust of the United States and the remaining parties to the JCPOA would deepen,” wrote Torbjorn Soltvedt, senior analyst at MENA and Verisk Maplecroft. in a research note this week.

The ultimatum is intended to put pressure on Washington to take action. But it could be counterproductive, says Behnam ben Taleblu, a senior member of the Washington-based Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

Iran’s term threat is “designed to increase risks and fears in Washington about the direction of the nuclear program. Risks and fears that Tehran hopes Washington will improve with concessions and relief from premature sanctions,” he said Talking to CNBC.

But aggravated nuclear violations, even under Biden, “may help drive Europe toward Washington, which now has a more limited Iran policy,” he warned.

And the Islamic Republic has not held back from breaching the parameters of the deal after Biden’s election, in actions that JCPOA negotiators have called “provocative” and “serious”. Betting has been on the rise since May 2019, a year after the Trump administration withdrew from the deal and began imposing “maximum pressure” sanctions on the country for what it called its “destabilizing regional behavior.”

Iranian officials have previously stressed that the violations are reversible once Washington offers relief from sanctions.

But that relief is unlikely any time soon, as Biden’s goals with the deal face a lack of support from much of Congress and his team wants to avoid looking “soft” in Iran.

According to Sanam Vakil, an expert in Iran and deputy director of Chatham House’s MENA program, this is not a chicken game as big as it sounds.

“It’s not really a chicken game. It’s really about the Biden administration to figure out how they want to proceed, run and transit, and domestic difficulties in the U.S. have really hampered what could have been a faster re-entry.” , he said. .

And the confrontation, Vakil believes, is more a debate about the order in which certain concessions will be made.

“What we see playing in the public domain is a debate about sequencing,” he said.

“Iranians say publicly that we need to lift all sanctions before we do anything.” And, of course, they will say that because they need to know where the United States is, what the red lines of the United States are: in the process “.

Henry Rome, a regional analyst with the Eurasia group, says the Biden administration “is considering making a first move towards Iran, with the aim of demonstrating a commitment to return to the JCPOA and urging Iran to accept negotiations without giving significant leverage to the US “.

This measure would be largely symbolic, but could include lifting sanctions on people, removing U.S. objections to an IMF loan, or facilitating humanitarian trade.

“If the United States offers a tangible sign of progress before (February 21), that date, that may be enough for the Iranian leadership to counter these conditions,” Rome said.

In short, what is much more important for the survival of the agreement and relations between the United States and Iran is what happens on June 18: Iran’s presidential election, which could make one choose much tougher and anti-American leader.

The preparation of these elections “will give a clearer indication of the will of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to support another serious effort to reach an agreement” on the nuclear issue, Verisk’s Soltvedt said.

“An agreement between Iran and the United States before was a remote prospect and the risk of Khamenei moving away from the JCPOA this year will remain high.”