When countries don’t keep their promises, it makes it difficult to know what to expect out of them.
President Biden has botched international relations with Iran over and over again. At this point, they don’t even want to sit down to the negotiating table with him.
This creates a problem. After all, Iran is going nuclear…and we don’t know just how much we have to worry about them since they’re not talking.
Nuclear negotiations have been taking place with not only the U.S. but also other world powers. Unfortunately, the nuclear negotiators from Tehran are putting off another trip to the Australian capital of Vienna.
The stalemate has been going on since June – and the window to get the 2015 nuclear deal back into place is quickly closing.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the nuclear watchdog of the United Nations, has presented two reports. It describes how Iran has refused to provide answers to its past nuclear activities. It also talks about how Tehran has been obstructing how international inspectors monitor work being done.
Iran is practically running from the 2015 nuclear deal at this point. Ultimately, it means that they don’t get the sanctions relief if they don’t curb their nuclear activity.
Iran is enriching more and more uranium so that it gets closer to the weapons-grade level of 60 percent. This means that Iran could have their hands on nuclear weapons – or be extremely close to doing so.
At the beginning of this year, U.S. and European officials had been cautiously optimistic that they could get Iran to return to its 2015 deal. That’s looking less and less likely as we move further into the year.
An IAEA Board of Governors meeting will be taking place next week in Vienna. It will involve determining whether it’s necessary to pass a resolution that will condemn Iran for its behavior. It could work in one of two ways. Iran moves back to the bargaining table or the hard-line government decides to quit talking for good. This has already been implied by Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi when he talked to Charles Michel, the European Council President.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has noted something similar, explaining that “I’m not going to put a date, but we are getting closer to the point at which a strict return to compliance … does not reproduce the benefits that that agreement achieved.”
There’s a reason why Trump abandoned the agreement in 2018 – Iran was already developing their uranium.
Some kind of resolution needs to be established. Otherwise, Iran could turn into a loose cannon, quite literally. We need to ensure that they don’t continue to develop uranium to a weapons-grade level. Who they would use it on is anyone’s guess – and the UN needs to ensure that the decision never has to be made.
It seems that Iran doesn’t care about sanctions relief at this point. So, global powers have to figure out a way to condemn Iran in a way that will get Present Raisi to consider a new agreement.
One senior official of the IAEA has said that “it’s hard to see how a resolution can be averted.” Another has said, “The accumulation of negative facts in the two reports cry out for the passing of a resolution.”
However, Iran is not allowing inspectors access to cameras. They were supposed to provide access by August 24 and have yet to comply. What this means is that the globe is at risk of Iran diverting materials or technologies without the knowledge of the IAEA.
At this point, it’s not just up to the U.S. to apply pressure. Other global leaders have to apply pressure to Iran, too. Perhaps Biden should just follow suit – he’s not exactly known to be the most strategic political leader the U.S. has ever seen.
