SULAIMANI (ESTA) — The U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration should use leverage gained against Iran by the previous U.S. administration to reach a better nuclear deal with Iran in talks in Vienna, UAE ambassador to Washington said.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2018, which lifted economic sanctions on Iran in return for curbs to its nuclear program.
He reimposed U.S. sanctions, prompting Iran in return to violate the accord’s atomic limits.
“You [U.S.] are essentially in the driver’s seat to get to a point to where we can address what I believe were shortcomings in JCPOA,” UAE ambassador Yousef Al Otaiba said in a virtual discussion with Stanford University’s Hoover Institution on Wednesday, according to Reuters.
He listed the shortcomings as the deal’s duration, that it did not address Iran’s missiles programme and support for regional proxies and that it still allowed uranium enrichment, Reuters reported.
“Why do they get to have enrichment that can ultimately lead them to a militarized programme, whereas your partners and allies … did a nuclear programme without enrichment, without reprocessing?” he said.
“Let’s say you go back into JCPOA, what prevents any country in the future in the region that comes up to the U.S. and says ‘I want the same deal that the Iranians got?’,” Otaiba said.
“Precedence is important. There is leverage today that you didn’t have in 2015, the region looks different, the dynamics are different,” he said, mentioning U.S.-brokered deals last year that saw the UAE and Bahrain normalize ties with Israel.
Diplomats from major powers are scheduled to meet again on Thursday with Iran and the United States to discuss how to bring both back into compliance with the nuclear deal.
The talks would be hard due to the indirect format, the history of U.S.-Iran mistrust and the complexity of the issues, according to Ned Price, spokesman of the U.S. State Department.
On March 9, U.S. and Iranian officials clashed over what sanctions Washington should lift to resume compliance with the JCPOA.
The United States says it is prepared to list “sanctions that are inconsistent with the JCPOA”.
Some diplomats hope agreement can be reached before Iran’s June 18 presidential election or else talks risk being pushed back until later in the year.
Khamenei, who has the last say on all state matters, has opposed any gradual easing of sanctions.
