President Joe Biden is willing to lift some counterterrorism sanctions that former President Donald Trump imposed on Iran, U.S. officials have told Iranian negotiators, on the grounds that at least some terrorism sanctions were “not legitimately” imposed.
“The Trump administration deliberately and avowedly imposed sanctions by invoking labels — terrorism labels and other labels — even though it was done purely for the purpose of preventing or hindering a return to compliance with the JCPOA,” a senior State Department official told reporters, using the acronym for the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. “We have to go through every sanction to make sure to look at whether they were legitimately or not legitimately imposed.”
Iranian officials have demanded that Biden lift every sanction imposed during Trump’s presidency, saying that Tehran will refuse to return to compliance with the nuclear deal apart from that wholesale reversal. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s team has rejected that demand, but the final details about which sanctions get lifted and which remain will set the terms of a political fight over whether Biden is allowing Iranian leaders to use the nuclear deal as a shield for their other aggressive regional actions.
“There have been some signs of progress, but I wouldn’t want to overstate it,” State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters Wednesday. “Again, these are indirect talks. The logistics of them are difficult. The issues are not simple or uncomplicated, which is another wrinkle in this.”
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Much of the complexity derives from a lack of agreement about the legal obligations imposed on the United States by the 2015 accord. A senior State Department official emphasized in early April that “the U.S. retains the right to impose sanctions for non-nuclear reasons” even under the deal.
“All sanctions that are inconsistent with the JCPOA and are inconsistent with the benefits that Iran expects from the JCPOA, we are prepared to lift,” a senior State Department official said on April 9. “That doesn’t mean all of them because there are some that are … legitimate sanctions. Even under a very fair reading, a scrupulous reading of the JCPOA, those would be legitimate sanctions.”
Blinken’s team conceded Wednesday that the Biden administration believes that the Trump team abused that right. “So that has made it more difficult,” the senior State Department official said.
U.S. and Iranian officials have been talking through intermediaries in Vienna in recent weeks under the auspices of the Joint Commission established to allow signatories to the pact — a list that includes the United Kingdom, France, Germany, China, Russia, and the European Union — to convene as needed.
“The negotiators are returning home,” Price said earlier Wednesday. “We expect these talks will resume in the coming days, probably within the course of a week.”
Blinken’s representatives in Vienna have identified for the Iranians the types of sanctions that the U.S. expects to lift as well as those that Tehran should expect to coexist with the rehabilitation of the nuclear deal, but the boundaries of those categories remain a subject of debate.
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“The third category is the one that is more ambiguous,” the senior State Department official said. “We have to look into whether we conclude, in the end, that they are — whether lifting the sanctions is necessary in order to come back into the JCPOA or not. And for that, we have to consider a number of factors, including the reality that the Trump administration … professed to be imposing this wall of sanctions in order to prevent a return to the JCPOA. So that’s one of the considerations. It’s not the only one, of course.”
