Senior Democrat Says Biden Will Continue Iran Talks As Long As Deal Possible

Ambassador Tom Nides told Israel’s Channel 12 news on Thursday, “Israel can do and take all the steps it needs to take to protect the state of Israel”.

He added that “If we have a deal, the Israelis’ hands are not tied. If we don’t have a deal, the Israelis’ hands are certainly not tied”, noting that “We’re not going to tell the government what to do”.

About briefing Israel on the latest developments of the Vienna nuclear talks to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the ambassador pointed out, “The Israelis know very clearly exactly what is going on. I’m not suggesting they necessarily like it always, but there are no secrets here”.

During a joint press conference with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday, Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said, "We have disagreements about a nuclear agreement and its consequences, but open and honest dialogue is part of the strength of our friendship. Israel and the United States will continue to work together to prevent a nuclear Iran”.

There are media reports that an air defense pact between Israel and friendly regional countries is in the works to confront threats posed by Iranian drones and missiles.

In the latest attack on efforts to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), House representatives Ronny Jackson, a Republican, and Stephanie Murphy, a Democrat, and 19 others called the Palestinian and Lebanese militant groups “Iranian proxies…waging operations against Israel.”

The Beacon reported that the “coalition of lawmakers are concerned that sanctions relief for Iran will embolden both terror groups and lead to an increase in terror strikes on Israel, which saw a wave of attacks that killed 11 citizens in the last two weeks.”

Two of these three attacks were carried out by ‘Israeli Arabs,’ Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, and one by a Palestinian from the occupied West Bank. While none was linked to the groups cited by the US legislation, Israeli has gone onto security alert fearing a repetition of last year’s ethnic clashes.

However, both Hezbollah and Hamas have praised the attacks as operations of “martyrdom” and both have long track records of organizing and carrying out attacks against Israeli civilians.

The Beacon quoted Jackson that “the United States cannot afford to ignore the threat posed by Iran-backed proxies.” It reported that AIPAC, the American Public Affairs Committee, was backing the bill, which would also require the Defense Department to report to Congress on other “Iran-backed entities,” including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Badr Organization (which is Iraqi), and Yemen’s Ansar Allah, widely known as the Houthis.

Unfrozen funds

The Beacon claimed that a provision in the bill that federal funds not “bolster…the listed terror groups” could “interfere with the Biden administration’s efforts to unfreeze Iranian funds that may be funneled to its proxy groups.”

Restoring the JCPOA, under discussion in Vienna for a year, would require the US lifting ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions levied by the Trump administration in 2018 on leaving the JCPOA. These threaten punitive action against third parties dealing with Iran’s financial sector or buying its oil, leaving billions owed Iran ‘frozen’ by banks wary of US action, especially in Asia.

While some argue that President Joe Biden requires Congressional support for JCPOA revival no more than Trump did for leaving it, Representative Michael McCaul, the lead Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told the Beacon he was hopeful eight Democrats would vote with the Republicans opposing the JCPOA.

State Department spokesman Ned Price on Friday repeated the administration’s arguments that Trump’s sanctions were ineffective in moderating Iran’s behavior, saying that Tehran-inspired attacks on US and its allies increased after 2018. While his claim about attacks on US interests is true, Iran was embroiled in the Syrian civil war, especially in 2015-2017, fighting to save Bashar al-Assad’s government, and entrenching itself on the Israeli border.

McCaul said that with Congressional mid-term elections due November “if Republicans take the majority, they will move to reimpose sanctions on Iran and nullify the terms of any deal Biden inks.”

The Beacon suggested that “with the ongoing war in Ukraine generating anti-Russia sentiment, provisions in the nuclear deal that empower and enrich Moscow will be a hard sell on Capitol Hill.” Russia and Iran signed an agreement in 2014 over nuclear power at Bushehr, which over the project’s life would see Tehran pay $10 billion.

He said on Wednesday that “any negotiation that stops short of preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon is fundamentally flawed.”

He added, "They haven't been talking to people in Israel or other allies of US that are worried about Iranian regime's threat both in terms of financing state terror as well as prospect of getting a nuke weapon and using that against our allies in Mideast".

He expressed doubt that the talks will lead to any tangible results, saying, “I don't have any confidence in the process right now”.

The nuclear talks have stalled mainly because of Iran’s demand for the US to remove the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) from its terrorism list (FTO) and the recent missile attacks have shed more doubts whether President Joe Biden’s administration would take such a step.

The indirect US-Iran nuclear talks were close to an agreement in early March before last-minute Russian demands for sweeping guarantees that would have hollowed out sanctions imposed following its invasion of Ukraine derailed the talks.

Russia has since appeared to have narrowed its demands to cover only work linked to the nuclear deal, leaving a small number of issues to be resolved between Washington and Tehran, diplomats say.

Dan Shapiro, who served as US ambassador to Israel during the Obama administration and is a specialist on US Middle East policy, has left the Iran team led by Special Envoy Rob Malley after just seven months, Haaretz reported on Tuesday.

This follows the departure of sanctions expert Richard Nephew in December and two other members of Malley’s team. Although Shapiro has not expressed any misgivings about the way the nuclear talks have been handled in Vienna, Nephew in February disclosed in a series of tweets that he stepped down from his post “due to a sincere difference of opinion concerning policy.”

On Monday, Senator Chris Coons, a close supporter of President Joe Biden told Iran International he was apprehensive over the possibility that the US might remove Iran’s Revolutionary Guard from its list of Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). He also expressed deep misgivings about Iran’s regime, saying that its behavior on several fronts has become worse in the last two years.

Senior Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told Jewish insider on Monday that an Israeli strike on Iran appeared to be the most likely way to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. He ruled out that the Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei would have a “change of heart” and using sanctions, although to an extent effective, could not guarantee the same outcome.

“If you don’t [understand] that, you’re making a huge mistake,” Graham told Jewish Insider. “This is never going to end short of a nuclear weapon unless somebody stops them.”

The Senator explained that he is putting together legislation that would require a close watch on Iran’s nuclear activities and a report to US Congress every 120 days about any “weaponization efforts, missile technology, proliferation and violations of International Atomic Energy Agency inspection regime.”

Graham maintained that if any Iranian deviation toward weaponization is observed, the White House would be required to come up with a plan to stop it.

Despite the recent ‘Negev Summit’ where Secretary of State Antony Blinken tried to show a mood of unity with Israel and Arab states that have normalized ties with Israel, deep concerns regarding the Biden Administration’s Middle East policies persist.

In an opinion piece published by the Jerusalem Post on Tuesday, Mohammed Alyahya, a Saudi researcher with the Hudson Institute argued that there is a serious “crisis” between Washington and Riyadh, smacking of a “divorce”.

Alyahya argued that since former president Barack Obama agreed to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the JCPOA, it became clear to Saudis that the US was abandoning its 70-year policy of protecting allies in the region. He agreed to a flawed deal in exchange for releasing billions of dollars to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards who arm militants around the region.

President Biden’s pursuit of renewing the JCPOA, which Donald Trump abandoned in 2018, is a continuation of the same Obama policy – or worse, Alyahya maintained.

Although his assessment might sound pessimistic, but a large-scale drone and missile attack om Saudi oil installation by Iran-backed Houthi forces past week inevitably reinforces the perception of a weak or indecisive US posture toward the Islamic Republic.

Historically, any threat to Middle East oil production would have solicited a decisive response from Washington – during the Cold War or in the following years. The swift and massive US reaction to Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait was a solid proof for regional counties.

"It’d be a shame not to reach some sort of an agreement when we're so near to reaching one,” Borrel told the European Parliament on Monday after returning from his tour in Persian Gulf Arab states.

“But I cannot guarantee that we will reach an agreement", he added.

"It seems that two weeks ago, we almost had it. Then Russia came, Russia was obstructing" because Moscow was looking for leverage over the West in its ongoing war in Ukraine, Borrell told EU lawmakers in Brussels.

According to the EU top diplomat, Russia wanted to prevent sanctions on Iranian oil being lifted "because if Iran started producing oil there’ll be more supply in markets and that's not in the interest of Russia".

The landmark agreement that Tehran signed with the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and China in 2015 allowed for the easing of sanctions against Iran in return for curbs on the country’s nuclear program.

But then-President Donald Trump unilaterally pulled the United States out of the deal in 2018, and started reimposing crippling economic sanctions against Iran, while Tehran began rolling back on most of its commitments under the accord.

Over the past months, negotiations have taken place in Vienna to bring back the pact, with Borrell's deputy Enrique Mora coordinating the talks.

The volatile oil markets have been closely watching progress of the Vienna talks as the lifting of restrictions on Iranian crude export could help counterbalance disruptions caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

But now that Moscow has lifted its objection, other demands have been raised that aren’t part of the nuclear deal, such as the status of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Borrell said.

Tehran has demanded that the United States remove the IRGC from its list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs).

Borrell's downbeat assessment of the talks in the Austrian capital comes three days after he announced that the parties involved could reach an agreement to restore the nuclear deal in "a matter of days".

On March 11, the EU official said the final text of an agreement was "essentially ready and on the table."

Speaking on March 5, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that sanctions imposed on Moscow had created "problems from the point of view of Russia's interests" regarding the restoration of the Iran nuclear accord, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

Such sanctions could complicate Moscow's involvement in Tehran's civilian nuclear program and trade with Iran, including arms sales, said Lavrov, who demanded "written guarantees" from the United States.

But Moscow apparently backed off later when Washington and its European allies refused to budge and limited Russian demands to JCPOA-related cooperation, something that has apparently been guaranteed in the text of the agreement being negotiated.

Russia is widely expected to play a central role in implementing a restored JCPOA, especially in removing Iran's stocks of enriched uranium exceeding limits set by the deal, a task it undertook when the agreement was reached in 2015.

The Biden administration has apparently agreed with a Russian demand that would involve lucrative deals for Moscow to expand Tehran’s civilian nuclear program, including the construction of two additional nuclear reactors at the Bushehr power plant.

Borrell said on Monday that his team were "shuttling between Tehran, Vienna, Washington trying to find a solution."

Mora travelled to Tehran over the weekend and met with Iran’s top negotiator Ali Bagheri-Kani and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian in a bid to close the “remaining gaps”.

Iranian officials insist that Tehran is willing to conclude the talks and sign "a good, strong, and lasting agreement" if the US is "realistic" and makes "a political decision".

Last week, a spokesman for the US State Department a possible deal with Iran could be close, while also warning it was "neither imminent nor is it certain".

Bipartisan opposition has been growing in Washington against the Vienna talks and the prospect of removing the IRGC from the U.S. terrorism list.