Iranian officials will not agree to curb their missile program even if the Islamic republic returns to the 2015 nuclear deal with the United States and other Western countries, the hard-line regime’s hand-picked president-elect said.
“All sanctions must be lifted, and their removal must be verified. America must abide by its commitments under the nuclear agreement,” Ebrahim Raisi, who was elected over the weekend amid questions about the regime’s involvement in the race, said Monday, according to state media. “The Iranian missile program is not subject for negotiations.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s team hopes to curb Iran’s expanding nuclear program by orchestrating a joint return to the 2015 pact, which then-President Donald Trump exited in 2018. U.S. officials maintain that such an agreement would set the stage for a broader dialogue about threats emanating from Tehran. Raisi’s statement could aggravate the bipartisan misgiving that the current round of talks could lead to the loss of leverage needed to secure any other concessions from Tehran.
“This is just the Iranians putting their foot down … which both politically and from a policy perspective puts the Biden administration in a bind,” the Foundation for Defense of Democracies Behnam Ben Taleblu said. “If there is no potential for ‘longer and stronger,’ then all it looks like the Biden team [is doing] is clawing back a fatally flawed and fast-expiring nuclear deal.”
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Blinken has faced skepticism not only from Republicans but from some congressional Democrats who worry that the administration’s stated plan to return to compliance with the 2015 pact and then begin talks over Iran’s ballistic missile program and support for terrorism will fail after the first step.
State Department spokesman Ned Price declined to give a direct answer when asked what the U.S. would do if Iran refuses to commit to negotiating over the broader range of security threats.
“We are confident that if we are able to return to JCPOA compliance, from there, we will have the tools, additional tools, we need to address issues outside of the nuclear deal,” Price told reporters Monday. “And in fact, we’ll be better positioned than we are right now.”
Raisi staked out that position in his first press appearance since Iranian officials announced that he would be the next president, following an election marked by historically low turnout and apparent efforts to ensure that a hard-liner replaced outgoing Iranian president Hassan Rouhani. Raisi, an ally of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who now runs Iran’s judiciary, has been reviled by human rights groups for his role on a so-called “death committee” that reportedly ordered the execution of thousands of political dissidents in 1988.
“Iranian authorities paved the way for Ebrahim Raisi to become president through repression and an unfair election,” Human Rights Watch Deputy Middle East director Michael Page said. “As head of Iran’s repressive judiciary, Raisi oversaw some of the most heinous crimes in Iran’s recent history, which deserve investigation and accountability rather than election to high office.”
Western officials and observers are not sure whether his current rhetoric is a clear portent of future policies in Tehran. His emergence as a power player on the international stage coincides with the conclusion of a sixth round of “indirect” talks between U.S. and Iranian officials in Vienna, which so far have not produced an agreement.
“The United States has to come to the recognition that it was the United States that left the deal with an objective, and that objective was not achieved,” Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said Saturday. “Now it is coming back to the deal, so it cannot dictate the objectives that it couldn’t achieve through economic war on the negotiating table. I think that’s a cognitive transformation that the U.S. administration needs to make. And I think we are getting there, but not there yet.”
The timing of Raisi’s emergence as president-elect and the latest break in the talks — the negotiators are returning to their capitals for new consultations — has raised the possibility that Iranian officials will return to Vienna with new demands, but it remains to be seen how they will approach a seventh round.
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“It could be that the Rouhani and Raisi teams are actually playing good-cop/bad-cop,” Ben Taleblu said. “Ultimately, the foreign and security policy is going to be devised elsewhere. The president is going to be implementing the policy, but with the amount of latitude granted to him by the Supreme Leader. So, time will tell.”
