In a desperate attempt to save the nuclear deal, President Joe Biden appears to have surrendered to last-minute Russian demands, allowing Moscow to trade with Iran despite sanctions imposed in wake of Ukraine invasion.
“We received written guarantees. They are included in the text of the agreement itself on the resumption of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on the Iranian nuclear program,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters at a press briefing on Tuesday.
Following the Russian offensive in Ukraine, the U.S. and several Western countries have slapped a slew of sanctions on Moscow aimed at crippling the country’s ability to carry out foreign trade and it access to the international financial system.
Russia, a party to the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, threatened to derail President Biden’s revised deal with Iran if Moscow did not receive written guarantees from the White House allowing it to bypass sanctions in trading with Tehran.
Israel’s i24News channel reported Russian foreign minister’s discloser claiming U.S. guarantees:
Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian met his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Moscow on Tuesday after negotiations regarding a nuclear deal stalled as Russia presented new demands.Lavrov said that Moscow received guarantees from the United States on its ability to trade with Tehran as part of ongoing talks to salvage the Iran nuclear deal.”We received written guarantees. They are included in the text of the agreement itself on the resumption of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on the Iranian nuclear program,” Lavrov told reporters during a press conference.
If Russian foreign minister’s claim is true, This makes President Biden’s nuclear deal much worse than it already was. The deal will not only ease economic sanctions on Iran, an aspiring nuclear power and world’s biggest sponsor of terrorism, it also allows Russia to use Iran as a its “sanctions evasion hub.”
As President Biden’s administration moves close to restoring the 2015 nuclear deal, the Republican opposition to the agreement if growing in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate.
“Forty-nine of the 50 Republican U.S. senators said on Monday they will not back an emerging new nuclear deal between Iran and world powers, Reuters reported Monday. The Republicans in senate “pledged to do everything in their power to reverse an agreement that does not “completely block” Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon, constrain its ballistic missile program and “confront Iran’s support for terrorism”,” the news agency added.
In face of a unified Republican opposition, President Biden plans to endorse the Iran deal without legislative approval, news reports indicate.
On Monday, former state department official, Ellie Cohanim, argued in her Newsweek op-ed that “legally required” congressional review. “If Democratic Party leaders refuse to submit for congressional review the new Iran deal expected to be announced imminently, they will be violating the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015 (INARA) and thereby overriding the will of the American people,” Cohanim wrote.
The Republican resistance to the Biden’s plan comes as Iranian want the U.S. to agree to all its demands and restore the Obama-era deal. “The United States needs to make a decision to wrap up a deal to salvage Iran’s 2015 nuclear accord with world powers, the Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson said on Monday amid fears that talks in Vienna might collapse,” the Reuters reported Monday.
Former Israeli Prime Minister and leader of the opposition, Benjamin Netanyahu, slammed the Biden administration and other world powers for pushing the Iran nuclear deal after Sunday’s Iranian missile attack aimed at the U.S. Consulate in northern Iraq.
On Sunday, Iran fired 12 ballistic missiles which landed near the U.S. consulate complex and a U.S.-linked air base.
The former prime minister blasted the Biden White House and others for their “desperate rush” to restore a deal with would “give the Ayatollah a nuclear arsenal.”
The Times of Israel reported former Israeli PM’s remarks:
In video messages posted to social media in both Hebrew and English on Sunday evening — addressed to Israeli and American citizens, respectively — the former prime minister said it was “absurd” for world powers to continue to negotiate in Vienna with Tehran.“The desperate rush to sign this flawed nuclear agreement with Iran is not only absurd, it’s downright dangerous,” Netanyahu stated in his English video, posted with the caption: “Every American family should watch this video.” (…)“Yesterday, Iran fired missiles in the vicinity of the American consulate in Iraq, and the US continues to charge ahead, along with the other powers, to sign a nuclear agreement that will give the ayatollahs a nuclear arsenal,” Netanyahu charged.“It would also relieve sanctions and give them hundreds of billions of dollars in order to continue the terror that they waged yesterday and wage every day throughout the Middle East and the world,” he said. “This agreement is even worse than its predecessor, because in three years’ time, under this agreement, Iran will be a threshold nuclear state. It will have enough enriched uranium to create dozens and dozens of nuclear bombs and it will have the ICBMs [intercontinental ballistic missiles] to deliver them to any place in the United States.”
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), took responsibility for the strike that saw a dozen ballistic missiles landing near the U.S. facilities. Under the proposed Biden nuclear deal, the U.S. could remove the IRGC from the list of international terrorist organizations, media reports say.
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