WASHINGTON (AP) – The Biden government’s first efforts to revive the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran are receiving a cold response from Tehran. Although few expected a breakthrough in the first month of the new government, Iran’s hard line suggests a difficult road ahead.
After making several significant openings to Iran in his first weeks in office, the government’s reach has been largely avoided by the Iranians. They had already rejected Biden’s initial move: a U.S. return to the deal from which President Donald Trump withdrew in 2018 if Iran resumes full compliance with its obligations under the agreement.
Iran is preparing to be a major test of the Biden administration’s general approach to foreign policy, which the president said will realign himself with the kind of multilateral diplomacy that Trump has avoided. While there are other controversial issues – Russia, China and North Korea among them – Iran has particular significance for Biden’s top national security advisers. They include Secretary of State Antony Blinken, national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Iranian special envoy Rob Malley, all of whom were intimately involved in drafting the 2015 agreement under President Barack Obama and may have a vested interest in saving it.
Biden took office promising to reverse Trump’s withdrawal from the deal, which gave him billions of dollars in sanctions in exchange for restrictions on his nuclear program. Last week, Biden acted in at least three ways: agreeing to return to multinational negotiations with Iran over the resumption of the deal, rescinding Trump’s determination that all UN sanctions against Iran must be restored and easing costly restrictions to trips by Iranian diplomats sent to the United Nations.
Even so, Iran has stood firm to the demands that it will respond to nothing less than the total lifting of the sanctions that Trump has again imposed. Over the weekend, Iran fulfilled the threat to suspend accession to a UN agreement that allows intrusive inspections of its declared nuclear facilities. Although Iran has barely ordered the removal of international inspectors, Iran has reduced cooperation with them and promised to review the measure in three months if sanctions are not removed.
The Iranians’ stubborn stance left the government on the brink of a difficult choice: move ahead with easing sanctions before Iran resumes full compliance and risks losing its hold or doubling demands for full compliance first and Tehran moving away business completely.
It is a delicate balance that the government is reluctant to admit it faces, given Iran’s politically sensitive nature in Washington – Republicans are strongly opposed to the nuclear deal – and in Europe and the Middle East itself, particularly in Israel and the Arab states of the Gulf are most directly threatened.
On Monday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken reaffirmed that the United States is prepared to return to the nuclear deal as long as Tehran demonstrates “strict compliance” with it. Speaking at the UN-backed Disarmament Conference in Geneva, Blinken said the United States is committed to ensuring that Iran never acquires a nuclear weapon and has pledged to work with allies and partners to “lengthen and strengthen” the agreement signed between Iran and Germany, France, Great Britain, Russia, China and the USA
“Diplomacy is the best way to achieve this goal.” he said.
However, just 24 hours earlier, Iran on Sunday rejected requests to suspend cooperation with the UN nuclear agency. Although Iran has not expelled the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is charged with monitoring compliance with the Iranian agreement, it has closed the agency’s access to videos from cameras installed in various locations.
There was no immediate US response to this development, but on Monday the White House and the State Department downplayed the measure’s importance.
“Our view is that diplomacy is the best way to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters. “This does not mean that they clearly have not taken the necessary steps to comply, and neither do we take action or indicate that we will meet the demands that they are making.”
At the State Department, spokesman Ned Price addressed the IAEA mission more directly, praising the agency for its “professionalism” in keeping inspectors and their equipment in the country, despite Iran’s initial threat to expel them on Tuesday. He said the United States supported the success of IAEA chief Rafael Grossi in reaching a temporary agreement with Iran, but regretted that Tehran remained at odds.
Price said the government was concerned that Iran appeared to be going in the wrong direction, but declined to comment on the government’s view of whether its reach so far had achieved results. Nor was he prepared to say what the government could do to bring Iran back into compliance with the agreement, considering its continuing threat to abandon all the restrictions it imposed.
“The United States is willing to meet with Iranians to discuss these difficult complex issues,” said Price, referring to phrases that government officials used to refer to their initial “compliance to compliance” objective and then ” compliance for compliance. more. “
“Compliance-plus,” according to government officials, would include limits on Iran’s non-nuclear activities, including missile development and support for Middle East rebel groups and militias. The main reason Trump gave for withdrawing from the nuclear deal was that he did not address these issues and his government tried for more than a year to expand the deal to include them.