Duha, SAEDNEWS, Nov. 9: The effects from Joe Biden’s election as the next president of the United States are certainly to reverberate across the world – but perhaps nowhere more than in Iran. Many Iranians’ hopes for a better future following the signing of a nuclear accord between Iran and world powers in 2015 were quashed some three years later, when President Donald Trump unilaterally abandoned the landmark deal.
Trump’s hawkish administration proceeded to impose waves of unforgiving economic sanctions that blacklisted the entire Iranian financial sector as part of a “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran that led, among other things, to soaring inflation and shortages of medicine.
Biden has promised to “change course” – but the path forward remains unclear and complicated. For one, the president-elect, who was vice president when the nuclear deal that is formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was struck, has said the US will rejoin the accord “as a starting point for follow-on negotiations” if Iran returns to compliance with it. Iran, on the other hand, has said the US must first “return to law and international commitments” before any further steps can be taken.
With European efforts failing to secure Iran the economic benefits it was promised under the deal, the Iranian government began to gradually scale back a number of its JCPOA commitments exactly one year after the US reneged on the accord in May 2018.
Iran has said it will return to full compliance with the deal after the US does the same.
Last week, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told CBS News Iran will under no circumstances renegotiate the terms of the JCPOA.
“If we wanted to do that, we could have done it with President Trump four years ago,” he said.
Mohsen Shariatinia, an assistant professor of international relations at Tehran’s Shahid Beheshti University, also believes a US return to the nuclear deal will not be simple or quick.
He said what has transpired between the two countries in the past four years – a period of escalating tensions that reached fever pitch at the start of the year when a US drone raid killed top Iranian General Qassem Soleimani – and the upcoming Iranian presidential election will only serve to complicate the issue (Source: AlJazeera).
