WASHINGTON – Many factors are to blame for the dying prospects of reviving the nuclear deal with Iran in 2015. But perhaps nothing has hampered the Biden administration’s efforts more than the legacy of President Donald J. Trump.
Of course, Mr. Trump withdrew in 2018 from the Obama administration’s nuclear pact with Iran, calling it “the worst deal ever.”
But Mr. Trump has done more than disconnect the plug. U.S. officials and analysts say his actions have significantly complicated America’s ability to negotiate with Tehran, which has made demands outside the nuclear deal, which President Biden has refused to comply with without concessions.
The initial pact curtailed Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for easing economic sanctions that have ruined the country’s economy. After Mr Trump withdrew from the deal and re-imposed sanctions, Iran also began violating its terms.
With no compromise visible with a new agreement and Iran making steady progress towards nuclear capability, the Biden administration may soon be forced to decide between accepting that Iran has the capacity to make a bomb or taking military action to prevent it from did. Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, such as the production of medical isotopes to diagnose and treat disease.
Mr Trump handed Biden an unnecessary nuclear crisis, State Department chief chief negotiator Robert Mali told senators at a hearing late last month, adding that the chances of rescuing the deal had “diminished”.
Negotiations in Vienna to resume the deal have been on hold since mid-March. On Monday, Secretary of State Anthony J. Blinken said that “Iranian leaders” must decide and decide very quickly if they want to continue with what has been agreed, and which can be completed quickly if Iran chooses to do so.
This month, after the United States and European allies criticized Iran for not cooperating with international inspectors, Tehran officials redoubled their work by deactivating and removing some surveillance cameras at its nuclear facilities.
Mr Blinken said Iran’s move was “not encouraging”.
On Tuesday, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdolahyan said Iran had proposed a new plan to the United States, but did not provide any details.
“Iran has never run away from the negotiating table and believes that negotiations and diplomacy are the best way to reach a good and lasting deal,” he said in Tehran.
A senior Washington administration official close to the talks said he was not aware of a new proposal from Tehran, but “of course we remain open” to ideas that could lead to an agreement.
Mr Trump’s legacy is pursuing the talks in at least three remarkable ways, according to several people familiar with Mr Biden’s negotiation process, which began early last year.
First, what Iranians call a huge breach of confidence: Mr Trump’s unilateral withdrawal from the deal, despite Iran’s adherence to its terms, confirmed Tehran’s fears about how quickly the United States could change direction after the election.
At the Vienna negotiating table, the Iranians demanded assurances that any successor to Mr Biden would be prevented from reversing the deal.
In late February, 250 of Iran’s 290 lawmakers signed a letter to the Iranian president urging him to “learn from lessons learned” by “not committing to any agreement without first obtaining the necessary guarantees”.
Representatives of the Biden administration explained that this was not possible given the nature of America’s democratic system. (Nuclear talks between world powers and Iran began under President George W. Bush and were finalized in a 2015 deal in a commitment by President Barack Obama. The agreement was not ratified as a treaty by the US Senate.)
Iranians have a related concern: foreign companies may be reluctant to invest in Iran if they believe the impact of US sanctions could fall again after the next presidential election.
Mr Trump has created a second major hurdle to resuming the deal, amassing about 1,500 new sanctions against Iran. Iran has demanded that these sanctions be lifted – nothing more than Mr. Trump’s designation in 2019 of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist group. Previous administrations have condemned the Revolutionary Guard, which monitors Iranian military officials in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen and helps Iraqi insurgents kill Americans. But they were afraid to identify part of a foreign government as a terrorist group.
Iranian negotiators have said that in order to reach a renewed nuclear deal, Mr Biden must relinquish the Revolutionary Guard’s terrorist label. But Mr Biden refused, without Iran first giving other concessions – and Mr Blinken described the group as a terrorist organization back in April.
Some analysts call the issue largely symbolic, but strong. The United States had already severely sanctioned the Revolutionary Guards and the group’s commanders, and the impact of the sanctions was expected to have long-term consequences for the Iranian economy. However, the US Senate approved a non-binding resolution of 62 to 33 votes in May, banning Mr Biden from removing the name. Some key Democrats backed the measure, including Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the leader of the majority. Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett wrote approval on Twitter after Mr Biden informed him that the appointment would remain.
A senior administration official said the United States was open to removing the designation of terrorism, but only if Iran was willing to offer new assurances about security concerns about the Revolutionary Guard. The official, who wished to remain anonymous to describe the private talks, would not be more specific than saying that Iran had refused to give up any grounds.
People familiar with the negotiations point to a third, logistical way outlining Mr Trump’s legacy: Iranian officials have refused to speak directly to US officials since Mr Trump left the deal. (Mr. Trump further infuriated Iran by ordering the assassination of Iran’s top military commander, Qasim Suleimani, in 2020)
During the talks in Vienna, Mr Mali communicated with Iranian negotiators, sending messages through European intermediaries from a hotel across the street. This slowed down the process and sometimes led to time-consuming misunderstandings.
Officials in the Trump administration and their associates expected similar complications to varying degrees, as they devised a policy that in part meant making any future negotiations more difficult without dramatic changes in Iran’s behavior.
Mark Dubowitz, chief executive of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based think tank that holds a strong stance against the Iranian government, was an external architect of what he described in 2019 as a “wall” of sanctions by the Trump administration. against Iran, including the terrorist name of the Revolutionary Guard.
“I am pleased that the wall of sanctions is, in principle, resilient because it must endure,” Mr Dubowitz, who strongly opposed the nuclear deal, said on Monday. “Iran should not receive easing of sanctions unless it stops the basic behavior that led to the sanctions in the first place.
Biden officials say Mr Trump made maximalist demands on Iran that were unrealistic, even given the intense economic pressure Trump is putting on Tehran.
The Trump administration “predicts that Iran will not restart its nuclear program and that Iran will come to negotiate our other concerns,” Mali said during a Senate hearing. “I wish they were right. Unfortunately, they turned out to be wrong on all counts. “
Iran began stepping up its nuclear program after Mr Trump withdrew from the deal. But Mr Dubowitz said he had accelerated uranium enrichment to more dangerous levels and was taking other threatening steps after Biden made it clear he wanted to return to the 2015 agreement.
Dennis Ross, a Middle East negotiator who has worked for several presidents, said both sides still have incentives to compromise.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei needs to ease sanctions on his economy. As for Mr Biden, Mr Ross said, “he has no other way at the moment to curb Iran’s nuclear program – and it is moving forward at the moment” with less scrutiny from the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Mr Ross acknowledged that a nuclear deal that had limited support in Congress even in 2015 seemed less attractive today, now that Iran has acquired more nuclear know-how and the key “exclusion clauses” of the agreement must be expire in just a few years. But he said Mr Biden could still ask for a return to the deal “not because he thinks it’s so great, but because the alternative is so bad”.
“Otherwise,” he said, “the Iranians can just move on.”
Farnaz Fasihi contributed to a report from New York.
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