The policies of the US government and Congress regarding Tehran and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on Iran's nuclear program could lead to a "devastating war" in the Middle East. This is the opinion of former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt and former NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana in a joint article published Tuesday on The Washington Post website.
They believe that despite Russia's military special operation in Ukraine, one cannot "forget the other hotbed of tension that threatens the security of the West: Iran and its expanding nuclear program." "If we fail to renew the 2015 nuclear deal, we are headed toward a new conflict with Tehran," the article's authors pointed out. They noted that US President Joe Biden and European leaders must act as quickly and decisively on Tehran as they did on Ukraine to "prevent Iran from becoming a state on the verge of developing nuclear weapons."
Solana and Bildt, meanwhile, believe that an initiative passed earlier this month by the Senate in Congress could "almost certainly lead to a deal breaker. It would require that the Iran deal also cover non-nuclear-weapons issues. The proposal has yet to receive approval from the House of Representatives before going to Biden for his signature. "While negotiations on the substance of the deal are virtually complete, Europe is trying to break the deadlock on an issue that continues to stall: the U.S. inclusion of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps [IRGC, the elite Iranian Armed Forces] on the list of foreign terrorist organizations," Solana and Bildt stressed. In their view, "Washington and Tehran would be foolish to allow domestic ideological views to sabotage the nuclear deal.
Biden's passivity
"Europeans supported [former] President Barack Obama's diplomatic efforts on Iran, protested [former US President Donald] Trump's withdrawal from the JCPOA, and now are back at the forefront of diplomatic efforts to end the nuclear crisis with Iran and avoid another devastating war in the Middle East. It is therefore perplexing that, as a presidential candidate and advocate for a return to the nuclear deal, promising that "America is back," Biden [is now] slow to engage in a diplomatic effort that is strongly supported by US allies. The general thought is that he is "cautious" about the Iran situation in the run-up to the upcoming [November] midterm elections [to Congress]. But frankly, being a president under whose leadership activities to contain Iran's nuclear efforts have succeeded would have been a far greater success for Biden and Democrats in the run-up to the 2024 election," the authors of the article say.
In their view, "Biden needs to think seriously about the costs of his passivity on Iran and find a way forward," or the world "could find itself in another conflict that no one asked for."
On the situation with the extension of the JCPOA
The JCPOA was signed with Iran in 2015 by the five permanent member powers of the UN Security Council and Germany to address the crisis over Tehran's nuclear developments. In 2018, Trump decided to withdraw from this arrangement. Biden has repeatedly signaled a willingness to bring the U.S. back into the deal.
On March 11, 2022, a break was taken in Vienna after eight rounds of talks to restore the JCPOA to its original form and bring the US back into the agreement due to external factors. Prior to that, the Vienna talks had reached the finish line and were expected to be completed by the end of February. The text of the agreements was agreed upon and is about 20 pages long, outlining further steps to return to the nuclear agreement in its original form.
GSV "Russia - Islamic World"
Photo: Creative Commons
Based on materials from TASS