US seeks to mount more pressure on Iran with new plot: Report

The US has revised its plot against Iran under President Joe Biden, seeking to simultaneously cripple the country’s nuclear energy program and deploy the sanctions machine against the Islamic Republic, an investigative report notes.

Noor News, an agency that is affiliated with Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), published the report on Monday.

It showed how US State Department spokesman Ned Price had revealed details of the plot in a recent interview with Qatar’s Al Jazeera television network.

In line with the new scheme, the US would try to “chain up Iran’s nuclear capacities and [use] the sanctions as a lever in a concordant and synergistic manner,” the agency wrote.

Although, the Biden administration’s officials repeatedly insist that his predecessor Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” policy towards Iran has been defeated, they are trying deviously to take the campaign to a new level and turn it into “a greater self-styled victory,” noted the report.

As part of the campaign, the US left a historic 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and others -- that is officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) -- and restored the sanctions that the accord had lifted.

Noor News’ investigation came amid ongoing talks in Vienna that are exploring the potential of sanction relief and restoration of the nuclear deal.

The US’s scheme for the talks, the agency said, became apparent after Price suggested to the network that upon fruition of the talks, Iran would be faced with the biggest deterrent mechanism targeting its nuclear energy program. The report also cited Price as revealing the US’s plan to legitimize the sanctions by dividing them into those that were “inconsistent” with the spirit of the JCPOA and those that suited it.

“By dividing the sanctions targeting the Iranian nation into [so-called] JCPOA-consistent and -inconsistent, Price is clearly speaking of backing Iran into a corner and insists that the [alleged] JCPOA-consistent sanctions have to remain in place,” Noor News reported.

As part of the new plot, the US seeks to have all the JCPOA’s partners endorse alleged “consistency” of sanctions with the JCPOA, the report said.

This is while all the sanctions are illegal because their enforcement violates the United Nations Security Council’s Resolution 2231 that has endorsed the JCPOA.

The report noted that Iran essentially joined the Vienna talks in the first place to disarm the US of its ability to pursue its “maximum pressure” policy so a complete sanction relief process can come about.

Price’s remarks “shows that the Democrats’ row with Trump over his departure from the JCPOA and implementation of the ‘maximum pressure’ campaign was not out of sympathy, but rather due to [the fact that Trump’s measures had] complicated the process of increasing pressure on our country,” read the report. “In fact, the row had to do with [the Democrats’ assertion that the US should] both organize effective pressure on Iran and put Iran on the rack so it can not advance its peaceful nuclear energy program.”

Iran, though, would not brook categorization of the US’s pressure into “good” and “bad” pressure, the agency asserted. It recalled that in line with a law ratified by Majlis (Iran’s Parliament) as well as the directions provided by Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, the Islamic Republic settles for nothing but removal of all the sanctions in one step no matter what their label.

Meanwhile, the agency underlined how Price had described the talks as “constructive,” saying this showed that Washington had neared its intended result.

This is while, Iran’s perspective of “constructiveness” differs completely, and the country’s senior negotiator has warned that the Islamic Republic would not allow the negotiations to turn into “attritional” discussions, the report concluded.

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