{"id":92361,"date":"2021-01-28T08:04:22","date_gmt":"2021-01-28T13:04:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/?p=92361"},"modified":"2021-01-28T08:04:22","modified_gmt":"2021-01-28T13:04:22","slug":"auto-draft-465","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/2021\/01\/28\/auto-draft-465\/","title":{"rendered":"Blinken: US Sanctions on Iran to Remain as Return to 2015 Nuclear Deal a ‘Long Way’ Off"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"VOA \u2014 WASHINGTON – Top U.S. diplomat Antony Blinken has signaled that U.S. sanctions on Iran will remain in place for some time as Washington waits to see if Tehran verifiably stops violating a 2015 nuclear deal with world powers before potentially rejoining the deal that the prior U.S. administration quit.<\/p>\n

Speaking Wednesday in his first news conference since being sworn in the previous day as secretary of state, Blinken said the U.S. is a \u201clong way\u201d from the point of fulfilling President Joe Biden\u2019s campaign pledge to rejoin the deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) if Iran resumes compliance with it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIran is out of compliance on a number of fronts, and it would take some time, should it make a decision to do so, for it to come back into compliance, and (some time) for us then to assess whether it was meeting its obligations. So, we’re not there yet, to say the least,\u201d Blinken said.<\/p>\n

Biden, who took office last week, has promised to offer Iran<\/a> a \u201ccredible path back to diplomacy\u201d if it returns to \u201cstrict compliance\u201d with the JCPOA, in which it agreed to curb nuclear activities that could be diverted toward making nuclear weapons in return for sanctions relief from world powers.<\/p>\n

Iran has been escalating its violations of JCPOA nuclear curbs since 2019 in retaliation for the 2018 withdrawal from the deal by former President Donald Trump, who unilaterally tightened U.S. sanctions against Tehran.<\/p>\n

Trump said he quit the JCPOA because it did not do enough to curb a range of objectionable behaviors by Iran, including attempts to develop nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n

Tehran has vowed to resist U.S. sanctions and has insisted that its nuclear program is peaceful.<\/p>\n

Blinken reiterated Biden\u2019s position that if Iran returns to JCPOA compliance, the U.S. would rejoin it as a \u201cstarting point\u201d toward further negotiations.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe would use that as a platform to build, with our allies and partners, what we call the longer and stronger agreement, and to deal with a number of other issues that are deeply problematic in the relationship with Iran,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

U.S. administrations have long criticized Iran\u2019s development of ballistic missiles, its support for Islamist militias engaged in conflicts with the U.S. and its allies, its detentions of Americans as bargaining chips for prisoner swaps, and its poor human rights record.<\/p>\n

Elliott Abrams, Trump\u2019s special representative for Iran who left office last week, told VOA Persian he believes Blinken was \u201crealistic\u201d in assessing no quick U.S. return to the JCPOA.<\/p>\n

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\"Elliott<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>
Elliott Abrams, U.S. special representative for Iran, talks during an interview with The Associated Press at the U.S. Embassy in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Thursday, Nov. 12, 2020.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201c(Blinken was) far more realistic than a lot of (the JCPOA\u2019s) proponents in Congress and the think tank world. He clearly said Iran must move first, and that Iran\u2019s claims to be back in compliance would need to be assessed before the U.S. would presumably act to lift sanctions. That means this is a matter of months, not weeks,\u201d wrote Abrams, who has returned to his role as a Middle East analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations.<\/p>\n

Such a timeline may be too slow for Tehran, whose ambassador to the United Nations, Majid Takht-Ravanchi, wrote in a Wednesday op-ed in The New York Times<\/em><\/a> that the Biden administration should \u201cswiftly\u201d remove all sanctions imposed by Trump before Iran considers returning to its JCPOA obligations.<\/p>\n

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\"Iranian<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>
FILE – Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations Majid Takht-Ravanchi speaks to the media outside Security Council chambers at the U.N. headquarters in New York, June 24, 2019.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cBiden and his administration should know that any delay in the lifting of sanctions will be construed as a sign of continued animosity toward the Iranian people,\u201d Takht-Ravanchi said. \u201cThe window is closing. If the new administration does not meet its obligations and remove sanctions in short order, it will destroy the possibility for engagement within the nuclear agreement.\u201d<\/p>\n

Naysan Rafati, an Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group, told VOA Persian that the Biden administration has been consistent and deliberate in its Iran policy so far.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is engaging in initial discussions with U.S. allies who might have fairly divergent views, before showing its hand on the specifics of its approach,\u201d Rafati said.<\/p>\n

In the news conference, Blinken pledged that if Iran returns to JCPOA compliance, he will build a \u201cstrong team of experts\u201d with \u201cdifferent perspectives\u201d to determine how to proceed.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the things that I feel about very strongly is that in any of the issues that we\u2019re engaged on \u2026 that we are constantly questioning our own assumptions and premises, that we do not engage in groupthink and that there is as much self-criticism and self-reflection as we get from the outside. \u2026 So, I think you can expect to see that (approach) as we move forward with regard potentially to Iran, and for that matter, to just about any other issue we tackle,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Abrams said it is not yet clear if Biden will appoint a special representative for Iran, the same role he held under Trump\u2019s top diplomat, Mike Pompeo.<\/p>\n

He also pointed out that Biden\u2019s initial team of top aides includes other officials who negotiated the JCPOA under Trump\u2019s predecessor, President Barack Obama, for whom Biden served as vice president.<\/p>\n

The Biden aides include National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, Deputy Secretary of State nominee Wendy Sherman and Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the moment, the Biden-Blinken-Sullivan-Sherman-Kerry team is a JCPOA team and does not present the differing perspectives Blinken says he wants,\u201d Abrams said.<\/p>\n

This article originated in VOA\u2019s Persian Service<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

VOA \u2014 WASHINGTON – Top U.S. diplomat Antony Blinken has signaled that U.S. sanctions on Iran will remain in place for some time as Washington waits to see if Tehran verifiably stops violating a 2015 nuclear deal with world powers before potentially rejoining the deal that the prior U.S. administration quit. Speaking Wednesday in his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":92362,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latests"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"en","enabled_languages":["fa","en"],"languages":{"fa":{"title":true,"content":false,"excerpt":false},"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92361"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92361\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92364,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92361\/revisions\/92364"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}