Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s plan to rehabilitate the 2015 Iran nuclear deal gives away leverage needed to curtail the regime’s general aggression, according to a top Senate Democrat.
Blinken faced probing questions from his own party as he toured several congressional committees to defend the State Department budget request. Skeptical lawmakers put a spotlight on the “indirect” talks about restoring the nuclear deal, as they implied the stated plan to restore the deal and then curtail the rest of Iran’s threatening activity is unrealistic given the country had grown more bellicose in the years when the deal was in force.
“If all we return to is a ‘compliance for compliance’ basis, which is my takeaway from the conversations I’ve had with your negotiators, and if we have a history that Iran never saw to get more relief in return for dealing with its other malign activities, what’s going to make us believe that, in fact, a return to ‘compliance for compliance’ is going to produce anything stronger than what we had?” asked Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat.
Blinken framed that effort as a “first step” toward a broader negotiation. Still, his critics expressed doubt that Iranian officials would enter those talks after receiving the sanctions relief they are expected to obtain in any agreement for the United States and Iran to return to the original deal.
US TOUTS ‘MEANINGFUL PROGRESS’ IN IRAN NUCLEAR TALKS
The dilemma arises partly from the fact many of the Iranian entities that benefited from the lifting of sanctions when the 2015 nuclear deal went into effect are also involved in terrorism. Former President Donald Trump’s team imposed terrorism sanctions on those entities, such as the Central Bank of Iran and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, after Iran hawks argued the terrorism sanctions would complicate plans to restore the nuclear accord.
“Will you commit today that the administration will not provide sanctions relief … that directly or indirectly benefits the Central Bank of Iran, or the National Iranian Oil Company, unless or until the Treasury Department determines that these entities are no longer connected to the IRGC or Iran’s terrorism financing activities?” Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, asked during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing earlier Tuesday.
Blinken demurred and reminded her the U.S. and Iran are still negotiating over which sanctions would have to be waived and what Iran would have to do to make that worthwhile for the U.S.
“Were that to happen, our responsibility would be to lift sanctions [that are] inconsistent with the JCPOA, but to resolutely maintain sanctions that are consistent with it, to deal with the multiplicity of Iran’s malign actions in a whole series of areas,” he said. “I would anticipate that even in the event of a return to compliance with the JCPOA, hundreds of sanctions will remain in place, including sanctions imposed by the Trump administration.”
Menendez isn’t the only Democrat who raised the warning that those remaining sanctions won’t harm the Iranian regime enough to persuade Tehran to curtail terrorism and ballistic missile development. Blinken faced a similar question during his appearance Monday before the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
“So, your position thus far has been ‘compliance for compliance’ [and] the continuation of non-JCPOA sanctions, leading to a deal that as you say is longer and stronger,” Rep. Ted Deutch, a Florida Democrat who chairs the subcommittee for the Middle East, North Africa, and global counterterrorism. “There are some who are arguing once you lift any sanctions, you lose the possibility of ever getting to longer and stronger. I’d ask if you could help us understand the path from JCPOA re-entry to a follow on agreement. And at what point do we deal with the non-nuclear issues? When do those come into view, and how do we address them?”
Blinken responded in each case by warning that Iran’s illicit uranium enrichment has reportedly slashed the so-called “breakout time” — the amount of time it would take for the regime to develop a nuclear bomb if it chose to do so — to just a few months.
“If they continue to enrich at the levels and the ways that they’re doing, it will get down eventually to a few weeks,” he told Menendez. “So, that is a concrete problem. We have an interest in putting that nuclear problem back in a box, because an Iran with a nuclear weapon or an ability to produce the fissile material on very short notice to get one is an Iran that’s going to be an even worse actor in terms of its impunity in that area.”
He made the same point to Deutch, but he implied that newfound concord with western European allies who support the original deal — European officials were outraged when then-President Trump exited the pact, which they regard as key to defusing a nuclear crisis — could strengthen the American position after the sanctions are lifted.
“We’re going to be in a much better place with our allies, with our partners, who wanted to stick with the agreement for all this time, to do exactly that: to insist that Iran engage on these other issues and be a united front to hold them to account,” Blinken told Deutch.
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Menendez cast doubt on that prospect. “I hope, Mr. Secretary, that as we are assuaging our European colleagues and cohorts in this effort, that they are truly committed to the ‘stronger’ [deal] part,” he said. “My experience with them is they want to solve the immediate problem, but getting them to follow on, on the longer-term problems is a much more difficult proposition.”
