For months, President Biden and his Iranian counterpart have said they want to rejoin the 2015 nuclear agreement known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Yet neither side is any closer now to that goal, with Tehran moving further away from compliance and rejecting Washington’s offer to talk.

This standoff highlights the hazardous path of any U.S. return to the JCPOA, even if intended as the first step toward a better deal. An array of obstacles threatens to make this policy self-defeating, and perhaps impossible, for the United States.