Andrew Parasiliti of AL-Monitor (paywall in the future?) sees President Biden as making slow but steady progress in repairing the damage caused by former President Trump’s blundering about:
The Biden administration’s approach to Iran reflects a hard-headed realism necessary for the managed-not-solved nature of the Iranian challenge.
And it may be working.
Five Americans unjustly detained in Iran are expected to be released within weeks. There are reports that Iran is keeping its uranium enrichment below 60%, a red line for weaponization, and Iran has so far refrained from providing ballistic missiles to Russia. An understanding, if not an “agreement,” seems to be taking shape, in which Iran would adhere to constraints on its nuclear program under IAEA supervision, while setting new mechanisms for de-escalation. The United States did not oppose a China-brokered agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran in March. Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said Iranian-Saudi relations are “on the right track” during a visit to Riyadh this week where he met his Saudi counterpart, Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud.
This is all fragile and uncertain, and some may claim that it is cold comfort given Iran’s record. But let’s remember that President Joe Biden inherited a crisis with Iran in January 2021. His predecessor, Donald Trump, withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in May 2018, upending a hard-earned international consensus about Iran’s nuclear program. In return for sanctions relief, Iran had kept its uranium enrichment program in check, under tight international constraints. After May 2018, Iran blew by JCPOA restrictions on enrichment, threatening a nuclear breakout, and the window for a potential bomb shrank from years to months.
The JCPOA may not be recoverable, but the Iranian government, minus a few hard liners, is well aware that going head to head with even Israel, much less the United States, over the nuclear weapons issue is a tasteless bit of madness, and therefore they, too, have a reason to cooperate, quietly as it may be, with the United States.
As ever, for us tyros at Middle East politics, the magnitude of the screaming of hard liners in both countries is a measure for the actual importance and potential of any agreements. Every time Senator Cotton (R-AL) shrieks about appeasing Iran, or ransoming hostages, you more or less can be sure that Biden and Secretary of State Blinken are making substantial progress in reducing the damage of the Trump Administration.
