To Biden Admin: Do Not Give Away US Leverage Against Iran

by Majid Rafizadeh, GATESTONE INSTITUTE  •  November 27, 2021

• Since the Biden administration evidently is insisting on negotiating with a predatory regime such as Iran, at least it should not enter the negotiations from a position of weakness.
• The Biden administration needs to understand that the Iranian regime is desperate for the revival of the nuclear deal due to the significant financial and sanctions relief that the JCPOA offers the ruling clerics.
• Iran’s state-controlled Arman-e-Meli newspaper surprisingly acknowledged on November 20, 2021: “No country, neither China nor Russia, will be able to save our economy. We must try to lift the sanctions. The way out of the internal pressures and the heavy (bad) economic situation is to get rid of the issue of sanctions and it will be solved with the JCPOA.”
• Iran’s mullahs particularly love the nuclear deal because of its fundamental flaws, especially the sunset clauses that remove restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program after the deal soon expires. The nuclear deal, rather than preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, as it was falsely touted to do, in fact paves the way for Tehran to become a legitimized nuclear state.

The Iranian regime will be resuming “nuclear talks” with the P5+1 (the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China plus Germany) next week. It is crucial that the Biden administration not give away the leverage that the former administration built against the Islamic Republic through sanctions. The deal is not yet dead: the Biden administration and the EU are still trying to resurrect it.

China and Russia, because of their shared geopolitical, strategic and economic interests, are likely to align themselves with Iran’s leaders and their demands. Iran’s new president, Ebrahim Raisi, recently spoke with his Russian counterpart, President Vladimir Putin, regarding the upcoming nuclear talks and the revival of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). China, Russia, and the Islamic Republic, according to a statement released by the Chinese government, have apparently already reached “a broad consensus” on the deal

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