IT is now clear that the talks aimed at reviving the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal – are going nowhere. After eight rounds of indirect talks, the Biden administration and the government of Iran’s hard-line president, Ebrahim Raisi, have failed to reinstate the deal that the Trump administration renounced in 2018.
Iran refuses to return to the Iran nuclear deal unless it receives an ironclad guarantee that it won’t be repealed again if a Republican president comes to power in 2024. Iran also wants the foreign terrorist organisation designation the Trump administration slapped on its Revolutionary Guard Corps removed before a new deal, and any accompanying sanctions relief, can be put into place. Both these demands, for different political reasons, are impossible for the United States to agree to.