It is now clear that the talks aimed at reviving the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal — are going nowhere. After eight rounds of indirect talks, the Biden administration and the government of Iran’s hard-line president, Ebrahim Raisi, have failed to reinstate the deal that the Trump administration renounced in 2018.
Iran refuses to return to the Iran nuclear deal unless it receives an ironclad guarantee that it won’t be repealed again if a Republican president comes to power in 2024. Iran also wants the foreign terrorist organization designation the Trump administration slapped on its Revolutionary Guard Corps — whose vast web of industrial and commercial interests make it integral to all aspects of the country’s economy — removed before a new deal, and any accompanying sanctions relief, can be put into place. Both these demands, for different political reasons, are impossible for the U.S. to agree to.
The Iran nuclear negotiation, when it began in 2009, was never meant to take on a life of its own or become the alpha and omega of U.S.-Iran policy. Rather, President Barack Obama envisaged it as an opening to Iran — just one way to begin a larger conversation about rapprochement and reengagement with the Islamic Republic.
