Iran's Foreign Minister Strikes Conciliatory Tone on U.S.
Iran’s foreign minister welcomed the prospect of the U.S. rejoining the nuclear deal and said his country is willing to return to full compliance if President-elect Joe Biden lifts the crushing sanctions ordered by Donald Trump. “The fact that Mr. Biden wants to return to the nuclear deal is great,” Mohammad Javad Zarif told the state-owned newspaper Iran in an interview published on Wednesday. “We’re ready to hold talks over how the U.S. can re-enter the nuclear deal.”
The Biden administration, he said, can lift sanctions on Iran with three executive orders, repeating an Iranian prerequisite to returning to negotiations. Zarif’s comments were the most conciliatory yet since Biden was proclaimed the winner of the Nov. 3 U.S. election, whose results Trump continues to contest. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who staked his political reputation on the nuclear accord only to see it unravel after Trump withdrew, said the new circumstance will allow Iran to “move away from an environment of threat under the current insurgent U.S. government toward an environment of opportunities.”
Yet the suggestion that Biden could simply turn back the clock and rejoin the 2015 deal without demanding changes ignores developments since that time. The swelling of Iran’s enriched-uranium stockpile beyond limits set by the moribund accord will complicate any efforts by Biden to revive the deal. Since Trump pulled out of the accord in May 2018, the Persian Gulf country’s uranium stockpile has risen eight-fold to over 2,400 kilograms (5,291 pounds). That’s enough to create three bombs if Iran chose to enrich the material to weapons grade.
Biden, in a September op-ed for CNN, said he would offer Tehran “a credible path back to diplomacy” but hinted that he’d make further demands on the Islamic Republic. “If Iran returns to strict compliance with the nuclear deal, the United States would rejoin the agreement as a starting point for follow-on negotiations” that would strengthen and extend the deal’s provisions “while also addressing other issues of concern,” he said. These include Iran’s support for militant movements that have destabilized the Middle East and its ballistic missile program.
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:GKCqgxh0abgJ:https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-18/iran-s-zarif-strikes-conciliatory-tone-on-u-s-skirts-obstacles+&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us