Press TV – September 15, 2020
A former American Senate foreign policy analyst has expressed skepticism that a Joe Biden administration would re-enter into the nuclear agreement with Iran.
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has said that if elected he will return the United States to the Iran nuclear deal as a starting point for follow-on negotiations.
Biden said in a recent article for CNN’s website that the US will rejoin the 2015 deal if Iran returns to what he called “strict compliance” with the nuclear accord, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
James Jatras, a former Senate foreign policy adviser in Washington, told Press TV on Tuesday that “It’s hard to know how much we can make of Joe Biden’s claim that he would return to the JCPOA, if he is elected president.”
“I noticed that he caveats that with ‘Iran must return to full compliance.’ And of course, we know that Iran has taken certain steps that she feels to be necessary given the US pullout from the agreement and the fact that the Europeans have failed to follow through with their obligations under the agreement,” he added.
“So I don’t know what Biden or more importantly his advisors, like Nick Burns or Evelyn Farkas, have in mind of what would constitute full Iranian compliance such that Biden could say: ‘OK, fine now, we’ll enter into this plan,’” he noticed.
“He also talks about follow on negotiations, which raises the specter that additional demands would be placed on Tehran before even a Biden administration would be comfortable re-entering the agreement. So I am somewhat skeptical that he would actually do that,” he observed.
Biden’s Republican rival, President Donald Trump, withdrew the US from the Iran deal over two years ago. Trump said it was a bad deal that needs to be re-negotiated.
Iran has time and again said it will not renegotiate the existing accord or make a new one with the US as long as sanctions remain in place.
Since scrapping the JCPOA in May 2018, the Trump administration has unleashed its “toughest ever” sanctions to bring Iran’s economy to its knees, but it keeps humming and is getting back on its feet.