TEHRAN - The new Biden administration may find it difficult to revive the nuclear deal endorsed by the UN Security Council in 2015 due to the likely opposition by Congress, according to Politico, an American magazine.
In foreign policy area, President Joe Biden has promised to rejoin the nuclear agreement that former president Donald Trump described it as “horrible” and “the worst deal ever.”
Due to Trump’s imposition of severe financial and economic sanctions on Iran, Biden and his aides are facing serious challenges as they are seeking a path back to the 2015 nuclear agreement.
“For now, the U.S. government employees involved in sanctions policy have been thinking through what steps to take to return to the deal, a U.S. official said. They plan to submit their ideas to Biden political appointees, including Rob Malley, a foreign affairs practitioner whom Biden has appointed as a special envoy for Iran,” Politico reported on Saturday.
The nuclear deal left in place numerous other U.S. sanctions on Iran, such as those related to the so called, and definitely wrong, Iran’s support for terrorism, its defensive missile program. Many of the U.S. sanctions are especially powerful because they apply to non-American companies who want to do business with Iran.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has indicated he is willing to keep some sanctions. “The nuclear agreement was one thing, but continuing and even strengthening our ability to push back and to deal effectively with Iran’s egregious behavior, including in the terrorism realm, was something that we needed and should do,” he said on January 19,2021.
“Those lawmakers are skeptical of the deal will likely object to many if not all of Biden’s attempts to ease sanctions. They also will monitor how the administration goes about enforcing sanctions that it decides to keep”, a Republican Senate aide said to the Politico.
The unidentified aide emphasized “one area of concern is how the Biden administration defines what goods fall under ‘humanitarian’ exemptions to sanctions.”
“If they lift sanctions, I could see new sanctions being moved through Congress,” the aide predicted. “We’ll be closely watching any sort of agreements or understandings they’ll reach with the Iranians.”
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