Iran has asked the U.S. to lift some sanctions even without any deal. The Biden administration is desperate for a deal with Iran, and it apparently has not rejected Iran’s request yet. As Jazz Shaw notes:
The last time we checked in on the Iran deal talks in Vienna, they were basically… broken. There was no further movement toward any sort of deal, which is kind of amazing because you’d think that having someone currently being considered for a war crimes trial in charge of the situation would have ironed out all of the wrinkles quickly. And yet there was no further progress. But is there now a sign that the Iranians have seen the light and might be willing to give Joe Biden the deal he is so desperately longing for? Well… possibly. But before the Mullahs are going to commit to anything, they’d like Biden to go ahead and start lifting the sanctions on Iran today. And then maybe they’ll come back to the table later on.
As Reuters reports:
U.S. President Joe Biden should lift some sanctions on Iran to show his goodwill towards reviving the international nuclear agreement with Tehran, Iran’s foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said on Sunday.
Iran and the United States have engaged in indirect talks in Vienna over the past year to revive the 2015 nuclear agreement which then-U.S. President Donald Trump left in 2018 and Iran subsequently violated by ramping up its nuclear programme.
Negotiations have now stalled as Tehran and Washington blame each other for failing to take the necessary political decisions to settle remaining issues.
As Shaw observes,
There are quite a few people who are keen to see these negotiations get back on track and have a deal finalized. Chief among those cheerleaders is the aforementioned Vladimir Putin who stands to cash in on this in a big way if this deal happens. And at the moment, he could really use the money…We’re already dealing with a terrorist-sponsoring nation that literally fired rockets into one of our consulates in Iraq in the middle of the negotiations. The rockets were courtesy of the Revolutionary Guard, who are reportedly being considered for removal from the terror watchlist at the request of Iran. And the moderators for the negotiations are from the same nation currently committing massive war crimes on a daily basis in Ukraine.
Any of those factors should have been a total deal-killer, but somehow the American team manages to look the other way. That’s how badly Joe Biden wants to complete this deal and reenter the agreement with the Iranians. And why does he want this? Would it give the United States and our allies some advantage or enhance world security? Of course not. He wants it because he needs to check off another box on his list of campaign promises, no matter how destructive the results may be. It’s the reason the withdrawal from Afghanistan was such an unmitigated disaster. It’s the same reason the Keystone Pipeline was destroyed on day one of his presidency, leaving us sitting here today and really wishing we had that extra million barrels of oil per day flowing in from a country that actually likes us.
The Russians recently boasted about how Biden gave huge wins to Iran in pending nuclear talks in Vienna. Here is a link to video of “Mikhail Ulyanov, the Russian rep to the Iran nuclear talks in Vienna. He served as the mediator between Rob Malley, the US rep, and the Iranians. He’s bragging about how Russia and China teamed up with Malley to deliver huge wins for Iran” in a planned deal between the U.S. and Iran. But negotiators then failed to finalize that deal, perhaps because Iran wants even more.
As part of that planned deal, Russia would apparently benefit as well, in the form of sanctions relief. As Jazz Shaw noted, it’s “insane” for “the United States to be offering sanctions relief to Russia in the middle of a war in exchange for getting Iran to sign off on a meaningless and largely unenforceable deal. That’s particularly true when you consider that Iran just” shot missiles at our consulate in northern Iraq. This Biden administration policy confuses even members of the administration. A political appointee, Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman was asked why on Earth the Biden administration is doing this.
Even Sherman had to admit to journalists that it’s “hard to understand,” as the Washington Times reports:
A top Biden administration diplomat admitted Sunday that it is “hard to understand” why the U.S. and other world powers are negotiating a new nuclear deal with Iran, as Tehran claimed responsibility for a Sunday rocket attack that struck near the American consulate in Irbil, Iraq.
Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman was pressed on the administration’s continued push to secure a new nuclear deal with Tehran.
Officials have said the ongoing nuclear talks in Vienna are nearing completion, despite Iran’s aggression toward Americans in Iraq and even amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
As Jazz Shaw observed, Sherman “then goes on to make several claims that almost sound nonsensical. Check it out for yourself.”
