Article Author:
Associated Press
Matthew Lee
WASHINGTON (AP) — Iran plotted last week to attack writer Salman Rushdie and kill former national security adviser John Bolton The public indictment has given a new headache to the Biden administration as it seeks to negotiate a return to the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.
A solution may be tantalizingly close. Hmm. But as the United States and Europe consider Iran's latest response to the EU's proposed final offer by the West, the administration will seek new and potentially insurmountable domestic pressures to forge a lasting deal. face political hurdles.
Critics of the congressional deal, who have long pledged to scrap any pacts, say the country's leaders have refused to withdraw death threats against Rushdie and Bolton. Iran has also vowed to avenge the Trump administration's 2020 assassination of Iran's top commander by killing former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Iran's special envoy Brian Hook. there is
Such threats are outside the scope of the deal, which relates only to Iran's nuclear programme, but the argument by opponents of the deal that Iran cannot be trusted to receive billions of dollars in sanctions relief has been undermined. emphasized. And the United States will return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the signature foreign policy achievement of the Obama administration that President Donald Trump withdrew in 2018.
Karim Sajadpur, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the 2015 agreement had no illusions that this time would help ease Iran's actions or strengthen US-Iranian cooperation.
"The Iranian government is in a position to ease tens of billions of dollars in sanctions, and the regime's organizing principle continues to be its opposition to the United States and its It will continue to be violence against critics at home and abroad," he said. He said.
Iran denied ties to Rushdie's attacker, a US citizen charged with attempted murder, and was acquitted of a stabbing incident at a literary event in western New York on August 12. Iran's state media, however, have praised Iran's antipathy to Rushdie over the years, ever since the publication of his book The Satanic Verses in 1988.
The media associated with the Iranian leader said the attackers had carried out his 1989 order, or fatwa, and threatened Iran's then-supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. signed to demand the murder of Rushdie.
And the man charged with conspiring to murder Bolton is a member of Iran's Revolutionary Guard. The DOJ said the IRGC tried to pay US people his $300,000 to avenge the death of Qassam Suleimani, the head of the elite Quds Force who was killed in a US airstrike in Iraq in 2020. claims.
The regime with which you are entering into an important arms control agreement may be dependent on compliance with its obligations, or is planning the assassination of a high-level former government. I think it's delusional to believe that sometimes you're serious about negotiations -- officials and current government officials," Bolton told reporters Wednesday.
"There certainly appears to have been an element of the Revolutionary Guard in the attack on Salman Rushdie," said Bolton. "When dealing with the Iranian government between its nuclear activities on the one hand and its terrorist activities on the other, we must stop this artificial division."
Others agree. .
"Relaxing terrorism sanctions amid ongoing terrorist plots on the US mainland is somewhere between outrageous and insane," said a former Trump administration National Security Council staffer. said longtime trading commentator Rich Goldberg, now a senior research fellow in the United States. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies has also lobbied against its return to the JCPOA.
While acknowledging the seriousness of the conspiracy, government officials maintain that they have nothing to do with the nuclear issue, arguing that a nuclear-armed Iran is more dangerous and less constrained than Iran. Nothing has been done to change long-held beliefs. Iran with no one.
"The JCPOA is the single core challenge we face with Iran, the core challenge, the most threatening challenge we could face from Iran. It's about what is, and it's a nuclear weapon," State Department spokesman Ned Price said this week. "There is no question that a nuclear-armed Iran will feel even greater impunity and pose an even greater threat, a much greater threat, to the region and potentially far-flung countries."
"All the challenges we face with Iran, whether it's supporting proxies, supporting terrorist groups, ballistic missile programs, or malicious cyber activity, it's going to be harder to meet. I wish Iran had a nuclear weapons program," he said.
But legislators who opposed the 2015 deal opposed the 2015 deal, stating that the deal would make the most vexing restrictions on nuclear weapons time-bound. They will challenge it in Congress for giving Iran a way to develop nuclear weapons. nuclear activity. They say there is even more concrete evidence that Iran's malicious behavior has made it impossible to deal with.
Two of the most outspoken critics of the deal, Republican senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Tom Cotton of Arkansas, voiced their opinions on what Rushdie's attacks could mean for the administration.
"The ayatollahs have been trying to kill Salman Rushdie for decades," Cruz said. "Their agitation and contact with this terrorist caused the attack. This heinous terrorist attack must be completely condemned. The Biden administration must finally stop appeasing the Iranian regime.
"For decades, Iran's leaders have called for the murder of Salman Rushdie," Cotton said. "Today we know they are trying to assassinate an American official. Biden needs to end negotiations with this terrorist regime immediately."
Iran Nuclear Deal Review Act (INARA) ), the administration must submit for parliamentary review within five days of the deal with Iran being sealed. This will initiate a 30-day review period during which legislators may intervene and no sanction relief will be offered.
This timeline means that even if a deal is reached within the next week, the administration cannot move forward with sanctions relief until the end of September. It will take even longer before you begin to reap the benefits of significant relief.
Opponents to the deal in the current Congress are unlikely to be able to scrap it, but if Republicans regain control of Congress in the midterm elections, they may be able to nullify sanctions relief.
"Even if Iran accepted President Biden's complete surrender and agreed to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal, Congress would never vote to lift the sanctions. ' said the Republican minority on the House Armed Services Committee in a tweet Wednesday. "In fact, Republicans in Congress will work to tighten sanctions against Iran."