The Biden administration says it is close to reviving the agreement with Iran that was supposed to put the brakes on their development of nuclear weapons, needing only an affirmative response from Tehran.
For months, negotiations had been stalled with Iran insisting that all sanctions be lifted before they would talk. But in the last month, Iran has dropped that demand and is now insisting only that all sanctions be lifted if Iran signs.
The Biden administration is desperate to sign any deal they can, looking for some kind of foreign policy triumph as inflation, a slowing economy, and probable rising unemployment drags the president’s approval numbers down even further.
Speaking to reporters in Washington, a senior State Department official signaled that negotiators had reached the broad outlines of a potential agreement after discussions last week in Vienna. It would essentially return to the 2015 deal that President Donald J. Trump discarded four years ago, over the objections of many of his key advisers. Ultimately, that freed Iran to resume its nuclear production, in some cases enriching nuclear fuel to levels far closer to what is needed to make nuclear weapons.
Until recently, Iran was insisting they were in compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal, which gives us some idea of how bad it really was.
Related: Biden Brings Back Obama-Era Secret Iran Deals
A senior administration official said the talks had reached the “decision-making stage” and the ball was completely in Tehran’s court.
Like the original deal, the new one would not limit Iran’s missile development, the senior official said. It also would not halt Tehran’s support for terrorist groups or its proxy forces, which have stirred unrest across the Middle East, as some Democrats and nearly all Republicans have demanded.
Despite those shortcomings, Mr. Biden is prepared to return to the 2015 agreement and “to make the political decisions necessary to achieve that goal,” the senior State Department official said.
Republicans will want to know if those “political decisions” include giving billions of dollars in cash to Iran as Barack Obama did in the aftermath of the 2015 deal. It certainly would explain Tehran’s sudden about-face as far as their interest in making a deal.
One thing is certain: Biden has decided to leave the American hostages to rot in Iranian jails. As recently as last week, a state department spokesman said there would be no nuclear deal without a deal to release Americans being held by Iran. But an Iranian foreign ministry spokesman has ruled out releasing American “prisoners” as a precondition for a deal.
The unanswered question is what is to be done with Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium (HEU) — especially the uranium that’s been purified to the level of 60%.
“A country enriching at 60 percent is a very serious thing,” Rafael Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations body that inspects Iran’s production facilities and verifies compliance with agreements. “Only countries making bombs are reaching this level.”
Iran had been resistant to eliminating that 60 percent-enriched fuel. It is unclear how it would be disposed of, or whether it would just be moved to another country, perhaps Russia, which took Iran’s previous stockpile.
Russia took the stockpile, it’s true — and then began returning it in 2018 — long before the agreement was set to expire in 2030. Tehran then began installing their highly advanced centrifuges that were three times more efficient than the old ones in 2021. What’s to be done with the new centrifuges?
Biden was going to give away the store anyway, given his domestic political situation. But the time has long gone to stop Iran from building an atomic weapon. Any cosmetic changes made to Iran’s program won’t prevent what may have already happened — a reduction of Iran’s nuclear breakout timeline to a matter of weeks, not months.
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