Voters in November’s presidential election will determine how the United States will treat Iran and its nuclear capabilities, according to several government officials and middle-east experts.
And while President Donald Trump’s management is about to re-impose a “recovery” of sanctions against Iran on Saturday night, despite Europe’s opposition, there are new considerations about regional stability.
President Barack Obama and the leaders of several primary powers signed iran’s 2015 nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which stated that “Iran’s nuclear program will be exclusively peaceful. “
Trump, a long-time critic of the deal, unilaterally pulled the United States out of the deal in 2018. Joe Biden, for his part, a staunch supporter of the deal he had originally tried to sell to Congress, before Obama ignored the legislature, and called America’s current policy toward Iran “reckless” in a recent editorial.
The former Democratic president and nominee crowned a recent circular of complaints from former Obama management officials, some of whom were publicly Biden’s presidential candidacy, and under pressure on how other U. S. relations with Iran may be under Biden’s presidency.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other administration officials have defended the competitive stance of the existing administration and have long argued that the 2015 nuclear deal, signed through Iran, the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France and Germany, has done little to force Iran. Other activities in the region that threatened the security interests of the United States and its allies.
“The previous administration chose appeasement as a style to respond to,” Pompeo said in a recent interview with Fox News, responding to Biden’s recent reviews.
This contrasted, he said, with Trump’s “completely different leadership” seeking to curb funding for Iranian activities elsewhere, adding armed teams such as Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Houthi rebels in Yemen.
State Department spokesman Morgan Ortagus told NBC News in an email that Trump’s “maximum pressure” crusade over Iran had reduced the country’s provocative maritime habit in the Persian Gulf, limited the functions of its state broadcasting networks and harmed Tehran by billions of dollars. In the back.
All of this means that “Iran’s agents in Syria and elsewhere are not paid, and those they once trusted are running low,” he said.
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But Middle Eastern politicians and analysts are convinced.
“Trump’s line is a line of escalation, and that includes the Iran factor,” said Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, leader of the Palestinian National Initiative political party, who served as a minister in one of the Palestinian unity governments. .
He said existing U. S. policy would make the region more volatile and that it had been heavily influenced by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, adding Trump’s 2018 resolution to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal.
While the so-called “Abrahamic Agreements” signed this week bring little apparent progress towards ending the decades-long confrontation between Israel and the Palestinians, America’s “maximum pressure” crusade to isolate Iran is also being and has led to growing skepticism across the country. Region.
“We don’t think it’s a success,” said Mona Makram Ebeid, an Egyptian former and parliamentarian, referring to the American crusade to economically weaken Tehran.
Ebeid, who is now a professor of political science at the American University in Cairo, said Egyptians shared the view that Iran was a “big risk in the region,” especially given Tehran’s for Hamas in the neighboring Gaza Strip, but wondered why Obama the technique was unnecessarily rejected.
He said renewing U. S. sanctions opposing Iran would solve the challenge posed through the country’s nuclear program, but that the U. S. presidential election in November could replace the particular situation.
“Biden will have to be embroiled in a crash or a crash solution in the Middle East,” Ebeid said. “It will be more flexible with Iran. “
“The purpose of the maximum tension crusade to achieve a replacement in Iran’s behavior,” said Lt. General Jim Clapper, a former director of national intelligence from 2010 to 2017, “and he didn’t. “
“The Iranians didn’t suddenly see the bright city on the hill because of JCPOA,” Clapper said. “By repealing, by leaving JCPOA, we have turned away and, in my opinion, we have lost our influence over the Iranians. “he said.
“The challenge is that what has awakened Iran’s willingness to negotiate is that there is foreign pressure on them, but we no longer have that. “
In recent weeks, the United States has failed to get the UN Security Council approved measures to maintain pressure on Tehran, adding an unlimited arms embargo and re-positioning global sanctions that were lifted in 2015 with the signing of the Iran nuclear deal.
Iran’s leading administration management official Brian Hook resigned before the failed vote on the arms embargo in August, and just a few days ago, the International Atomic Energy Agency released a report that it appeared tehran now had 10 times more unre enriched uranium. permitted under the terms of the agreement.
While Pompeo said this showed that the 2015 agreement had failed to force Iran, other experts insisted that expanding Iran’s reserves and other measures to break the restrictions imposed by the nuclear deal are all reversible.
Two weeks ago, Iran legalized IAEA inspectors at one of two sites where undeclared nuclear activity took place in the 2000s, at which point the inspection is scheduled for September.
According to Ernest Moniz, the former energy secretary who helped negotiate the agreement and then sell it to Congress, the fact that verification and inspection measures continue to operate as provided for in the agreement is important.
“I would be very surprised if Iran rebuilt an arms program, facilities inspected 24 hours a day, 7 days a week through the IAEA,” he said.
And for some Iranians, a reconstituted agreement can offer the ultimate attractive long-term solution.
“If they really need to keep their commitments under the agreement,” said Foad Izadi, a professor of American studies at the University of Tehran, “Iran has said it is willing to talk about other fighting disorders. “
For some neighboring countries, this discussion is temporarily positioned. United Arab Emirates Ambassador to the United Nations Lana Nusseibeh said she hoped all long-term negotiations would address “serious considerations from other Gulf countries about Iran’s behavior. “
“We hope that the regional voice will be represented next time, and it will be our board of directors that wins in November. “
But across the region there is anxiety, in Israel and Saudi Arabia, according to Ilan Goldenberg, a senior middle-east security researcher at the Center for New American Security, which has worked on Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations at the State Department. . and Iran’s nuclear and military functions in the Department of Defense.
Countries that support the existing technique are involved in a policy replacement if Biden wins the election, Goldenberg said, and at some point, new talks with Tehran not only address nuclear capabilities, but also other regional considerations focused on Iran’s habit beyond its own borders. Predicted.
“You cannot be sure that an arms agreement is conditional on the solution of all disorders in the Middle East. But you can’t forget all the disorders in the Middle East to check for success in an arms deal,” he said.
“I think it’s imaginable that we’re in some kind of international relationship early next year, no matter what. “
Ali Arouzi reported from Tehran, Charlene Gubash of Cairo and Abigail Williams of Washington, D. C.