But the analyst warned that Biden is a “liberal interventionist” who was “instrumental in the invasion of Iraq, Syria, Libya, Ukraine, Venezuela, and Bolivia.”
Steppling, who is based in Norway, made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Sunday when he was asked by Press TV whether the Biden administration would avail the opportunity to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal and remove illegal sanctions on the Islamic Republic.
Iran’s UN ambassador has that the ball is America’s court regarding the nuclear agreement that it abandoned in 2018, adding that Tehran is waiting for the new US administration to take the first step to lift the unlawful sanctions and then rejoin the 2015 multilateral accord.
In an interview with NBC News on Monday, Majid Takht-Ravanchi said Tehran was not prepared to offer goodwill gestures or confidence-building measures until Washington removed its sanctions and returned to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
‘It’s up to the US to decide what course of action to take. We’re not in a hurry,’ he said.
In 2015, Iran and six world states — namely the US, Germany, France, Britain, Russia and China — signed the JCPOA which was ratified in the form of UN Security Council Resolution 2231.
However, the US under former president Donald Trump unilaterally pulled out of the JCPOA in May 2018 and reinstated the anti-Iran sanctions that had been lifted by the deal.
The Trump administration also launched what it called a maximum pressure campaign against Iran, targeting the Iranian nation with the ‘toughest ever’ restrictive measures.
“If you ask the question, is there an opportunity for anything and you're speaking about US foreign policy, the answer is well of course there is. I mean there's always an opportunity but it never materializes because the US government doesn't think about these things the way you and I think about,” Steppling said.
“US foreign policy since the end of World War II has been driven by the same concerns for every single decade and that is the protection of Western capital and markets, the possibility of new markets, and it was driven by anti-communism. And if you look at the record in Africa, for example, the US fought against African independence movements. The Soviet Union, Cuba fought for African independence movements. The US was complicit with the UK in the assassination of Lumumba who was probably the single most important African leader of the 20th century whose life was cut very short,” he said, referring to Patrice Lumumba who was an anticolonial Congolese politician and independence leader who served as the first Prime Minister of the independent Democratic Republic of the Congo (then Republic of the Congo) from June until September 1960.
Lumumba resisted Belgian colonialism and corporate interests. He was assassinated in a US-backed coup on January 17, 1961.
“So, is there an opportunity to change direction on Iran? Yeah, but I can't see that happening. I mean the X Factor in this, the variable in this right now of course, is that we're seeing a massive contraction of capital. And this is part of ‘the great reset’ is all about. The Klaus Schwab World Economic Forum idea and this is being driven by a certain faction of the ruling class - people of extreme wealth. And it's tied into depopulation schemes and all sorts of stuff, because of the idea of being that since the financial crisis in 2008 the profits are not consistent and they're not reliable, and the profits are much smaller than they were in the past, except for a few people like Jeff Bezos or whoever,” he noted.
“So, they're looking to usher in a more controlled form of capital -- call it whatever you want, people have come up with different names for it, feudalism being one -- but it's not likely to succeed the way they imagine for a variety of reasons we don't have to get into here but it will impact how the US views its interventions. Now Biden is a liberal interventionist. He was instrumental in the invasion of Iraq. He was instrumental with Syria, Libya, Ukraine, Venezuela, Bolivia. I mean Biden's track record is terrible,” he stated.
“And I can't imagine why he would change given that his appointments so far are all liberal interventionists just like him. They all think alike. And so I can't imagine anything is really going to change. I mean there are always cosmetic differences. Biden will probably return to the perception management style that Obama employed especially in his second term,” he noted.
“And that will be less bellicose and extreme than Trump was. But, it's frankly not substantially going to be different, and Iran loons with Russia as an economic enemy. China, I think, is hard to calculate exactly where China is in this because I think they probably have a lot of backdoor collusion with the US, and we see Xi speaking at the opening of Davos. So that's hard to know and I'm not an economist and I don't pretend to be but it seems to me that what we're going to see is a more controlled form of US imperialism with a sort of more narrowly targeted goals,” he said.
“But Iran is useful to the US as an international ‘villain.’ That also suits the needs of Israel. It suits Saudi Arabian needs as well. Iran becomes the justification for any aggression they commit. And Israel and the KSA are both, essentially, US proxies in the region,” he added.
“So, there's an opportunity but it's not going to be taken. I don't think, I can't imagine any way that Biden suddenly changes his very hawkish policies, I mean the hawkish policies he's employed for 30 years,” he concluded.
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