Biden administration engaged in ‘classic bad faith bargaining’ with Iran: Analyst

The administration of US President Joe Biden is engaged in “classic bad faith bargaining” with Iran on rejoining the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), an American political analyst has said.

Daniel Kovalik made the remarks in an interview on Tuesday while commenting on a Press TV report which says that the United States is still refusing to remove anti-Iran sanctions and honor the commitments required for its return to the 2015 nuclear deal after six rounds of talks in Vienna on a potential revival of the multilateral accord.

Giving a general picture of the US approach toward the nuclear deal under the new administration, sources close to the Vienna talks told Press TV on Tuesday that President Joe Biden was sticking to his predecessor Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran.

According to the sources, Washington has so far refused to remove all sanctions on Iran, including congressional laws and executive orders as well as the regulations of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), the Treasury Department, and the Judiciary, among others.

US refusing to fully remove Iran sanctions after 6 rounds of talks: Sources tell Press TV

The United States is still refusing to remove anti-Iran sanctions and honor the commitments required for its return to the 2015 nuclear deal after the six rounds of talks in Vienna on a potential revival of the multilateral accord, Press TV reports.

Kovalik said that the fact that “the US is still unwilling to lift a number of sanctions against Iran in order to re-enter the nuclear deal is just unreasonable, and Iran will never agree to that, and neither should they.”

“They're both technically parties to the same deal, their signatures are still on it. There's no reason Iran has to give up anything to re-enter the deal they already entered. So to me this is classic bad faith bargaining. It seems to be the US doesn't really want a deal here,” he added. 
The analyst said that he hopes that other countries, particularly from Europe, “can uphold the deal and find ways to defy the US sanctions because the US is so powerful in the economic markets that, even if they want to break those sanctions, it's not always easy to do so. But, I'm glad they are still committed to it.”

Former US President Donald Trump abandoned the deal in May 2018 and re-imposed the anti-Iran sanctions that the JCPOA had lifted. He also placed additional sanctions on Iran under other pretexts not related to the nuclear case as part of the “maximum pressure” campaign.

Following a year of strategic patience, Iran resorted to its legal rights stipulated in Article 26 of the JCPOA, which grants a party the right to suspend its contractual commitments in case of non-compliance by other signatories, and let go of some of the restrictions imposed on its nuclear energy program.

Now, the Biden administration says it wants to compensate for Trump’s mistake and rejoin the deal, but it is showing an overriding propensity for maintaining some of the sanctions as a tool of pressure.

Tehran insists that all sanctions should first be removed in a verifiable manner before the Islamic Republic reverses its remedial measures.
 

Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:

www.presstv.co.uk