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JERUSALEM, Israel – The European Union on Monday submitted a final nuclear arms text to Iran’s regime to temporarily curb Tehran’s ambitions to develop an atomic bomb in exchange for more than $100 billion in sanctions relief.
The elements of the nuclear package disturb many arms controls experts because they believe that the E.U. is on a concessionary negotiation track that is stuck in the past.
“Safeguards issues cannot simply be swept under the rug because the E.U. is trying to restore an element of its foreign policy legacy. 2022 is not 2015. Not only has the Iranian program advanced considerably, but Iranian officials appear increasingly comfortable talking about their capability to produce the ultimate weapon,” Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) in Washington, told Fox News Digital.
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the formal name for the nuclear deal, was completed in 2015. President Trump’s administration pulled the plug on the atomic accord in 2018 because the deal failed to stop the theocratic state building a nuclear weapons device.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, right, attends a press conference with Josep Borrell, the high representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, center, at the foreign ministry headquarters in Iran’s capital, Tehran, on June 25, 2022.
(Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images)
US HIGHLIGHTS ADVANTAGES OF NUCLEAR DEAL BUT ACKNOWLEDGES STALL WITH IRAN
“This was a horrible, one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made,” said Trump at the time, adding, “It didn’t bring calm, it didn’t bring peace, and it never will.”
The E.U.’s top diplomat, Joseph Borell, said, “What can be negotiated has been negotiated, and it’s now in a final text. However, behind every technical issue and every paragraph lies a political decision that needs to be taken in the capitals. If these answers are positive, then we can sign this deal.”
The 2015 deal was an unsigned agreement. It is unclear what difference a signed deal will make in 2022 since the accord is a political understanding.
Ben Taleblu, the FDD Iran expert, fired back in response to Borrell: “The EU’s framing of its recent attempt to develop a final deal based on the JCPOA has it all backward. Political will cannot be grafted onto a technical solution when the technical solution is slated to become the accelerant to yet another nuclear crisis with Iran.”
He added, “Rather than re-litigating the pathway to mutual JCPOA compliance, now is the time for creative solutions to repair gaps in the monitoring and verification regime of much more important accords than the JCPOA.”
The Middle East expert, Ambassador Dennis Ross, tweeted an additional deficiency of the nuclear talks: “Iran insists that in order to return to JCPOA, the IAEA drop its investigation of the 3 undeclared sites where it discovered traces of uranium. Iran has given no credible explanations for the traces; no surprise, they want the investigation dropped. It has something to hide.”
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, center, and Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, greet each other as Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi stands at right during their meeting in Tehran, Iran, July 19, 2022.
(Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP)
Iran’s regime has boasted over the last few weeks that it can develop a nuclear weapon, and even it went as far to threaten to obliterate New York with an atomic bomb, turning the metropolis into “hellish ruins.”
President Biden’s negotiators in Vienna, Austria, have not sought to restrict Iran’s production of its long-range missile program.
Both Republican and Democratic administrations have designated Iran’s regime as the worst international state-sponsor of terrorism. The Iran nuclear deal contains no provisions to stop Tehran’s sponsorship of terrorism across the globe.
IRAN DECLARES IT CAN USE NUCLEAR MISSILES TO TURN ‘NEW YORK INTO HELLISH RUINS’
“For our part, our position is clear: we stand ready to quickly conclude a deal on the basis of the E.U.’s proposals,” a U.S. State Department official said, adding, “They [Iran] repeatedly say they are prepared for a return to mutual implementation. Let’s see if their actions match their words.”
The Biden administration is deeply wedded to the Iran deal, declaring the final text “the best and only basis on which to reach a deal.” Biden’s team in Vienna, including his Special Envoy for Iran, Robert Malley, have faced intense criticism from human rights advocates and Iranian Americans for ignoring grave human rights violations in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
As Biden is pressing to reach an allegedly flawed Iran deal, the FBI issued three tweets on Friday about the Iranian threat to Americans.
“The Iranian regime and its terrorist proxies don’t just endanger the Middle East–they also put Americans, U.S. national security, and our country’s critical infrastructure at risk…,” noted the FBI in its first tweet to its 3.5 million followers.
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Malley’s critics want the Biden administration to address, for example, the Iranian regime’s massacre of nearly 1,500 peaceful protestors in 2019.
The U.S. government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, said, “The outcome of this matter depends on whether the United States wants to make an agreement.”
