“The Trump administration deliberately and avowedly imposed sanctions by invoking labels — terrorism labels and other labels — even though it was done purely for the purpose of preventing or hindering a return to compliance with the JCPOA,” a senior State Department official told reporters, using the acronym for the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. “We have to go through every sanction to make sure to look at whether they were legitimately or not legitimately imposed.”
Iranian officials have charged that Biden lifted every sanction imposed during Trump’s term, saying that Tehran will decline to return to agreement with the nuclear deal apart from that complete lift.
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Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s team has denied that demand, but the last details about which sanctions get raised and which remain will set the terms of a political fight over whether Biden is supporting Iranian leaders to use the nuclear deal as a protection for their other aggressive regional actions.
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“There have been some signs of progress, but I wouldn’t want to overstate it,” State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters Wednesday. “Again, these are indirect talks. The logistics of them are difficult. The issues are not simple or uncomplicated, which is another wrinkle in this.”
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Much of the conflict comes from the absence of agreement about the legal necessities enforced on the United States by the 2015 accord. A senior State Department official stressed in early April that “the U.S. retains the right to impose sanctions for non-nuclear reasons” even under the deal.
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“All sanctions that are inconsistent with the JCPOA and are inconsistent with the benefits that Iran expects from the JCPOA, we are prepared to lift,” a senior State Department official said on April 9. “That doesn’t mean all of them because there are some that are ... legitimate sanctions. Even under a very fair reading, a scrupulous reading of the JCPOA, those would be legitimate sanctions."
Blinken’s team acknowledged Wednesday that the Biden administration believes that the Trump team violated that right. “So that has made it more difficult,” the senior State Department official said.
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U.S. and Iranian officials have been talking through agents in Vienna in recent weeks under the auspices of the Joint Commission set to allow signatories to the treaty — a list that includes the United Kingdom, France, Germany, China, Russia, and the European Union — to convene as needed.
“The negotiators are returning home,” Price said earlier Wednesday. "We expect these talks will resume in the coming days, probably within the course of a week.”
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