Following Tehran’s partial curtailment of nuclear inspections this week, the Biden administration finds itself in a desperate race to salvage the 2015 pact that the new president has pledged to rejoin. But some critics say internal debates within U.S. President Joe Biden’s team may led it to wait too long to offer Iran confidence-building and humanitarian relief measures that might have brought Tehran back to the table sooner.
Despite increasingly hard-line statements from Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Tehran’s moderates have been waiting for signs from Washington of some measure of relief for its sanctions-strangled economy since former President Donald Trump pulled out of the pact in 2018—especially when it comes to humanitarian aid.
