Some House Democrats Sour on Iran Nuke Talks

A group of House Democrats warned President Biden Thursday they were unlikely to support a possible return to the Iran nuclear agreement as Tehran made new demands of the US.

The lawmakers, led by Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) said in a letter to the president that they were “highly concerned” about reports the White House is mulling the removal of anti-terror sanctions targeting the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

“We will review any agreement closely, but from what we currently understand, it is hard to envision supporting an agreement along the lines being publicly discussed,” they wrote, noting that Secretary of State Antony Blinken had told Congress he would keep the terrorism sanctions in place.

“As the State Department has often noted in reference to a nuclear agreement with Iran, ‘Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.’ We hope that no agreement is finalized without additionally aggressing these concerns,” the Democrats added.

The lawmakers also asked Biden whether the administration will seek congressional approval for any deal, what Iran’s expected nuclear breakout time will be, and whether Russia will gain economically from a potential agreement.

Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal reported that while Washington is balking at Tehran’s demands to lift the IRGC sanctions, any potential deal would likely lift similar anti-terror restrictions on dozens of other Iranian people and organizations.

Negotiators in Vienna, where the US and Iran are holding indirect talks about reviving the 2015 agreement, said earlier this month that they were just days away from announcing a deal. But negotiations were thrown into disarray by last-minute Russian demands for a written guarantee from Washington that Western sanctions over the invasion of Ukraine would not prevent Iran from buying Russian goods.

Although US officials have said they want to turn Russia into a “pariah,” the State Department has confirmed that American officials would continue to engage with their Russian counterparts over a return to the nuclear agreement, from which former President Donald Trump removed the US in 2018.

Russia’s top negotiator in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov, told Iran’s IRNA news outlet this week that “Iran got much more than it expected” in the talks.

Ulyanov also seemed to confirm, during an exchange on Twitter, that Russia intended to use the Iran agreement as a sanctions-relief mechanism.

Tehran on Thursday struck a harder bargain as well, with Iranian negotiators demanding that the US drop its “unacceptable proposals,” according to Reuters.

Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei also told state media outlets on Thursday that Iran would not reduce its military and political influence and nuclear technology development.

“Regional presence gives us strategic depth and more power. Why should we give it up? Scientific progress in the nuclear field is related to our future needs, and if we give that up, will anyone help us in the future?” he asked.

Four sources also told Reuters that Russia was the main obstacle to finalizing the deal, which is largely done.

Iran’s Entekhab News quoted Ulyanov as saying the final agreement would be approved by the parties to the deal.

Blinken told CBS’s “Face the Nation” last weekend that a US return to the deal would hinge on “whether we can resolve a couple of issues. If we can, we’ll get back on the deal. If we can’t, we won’t.”

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