Republican Sen. sets 4 conditions for Biden's JCPOA return

Republican Sen. Jim Einhoff, a senior member of the US Senate Armed Services Committee, said US Congress will make it difficult for new US President Joe Biden to return to a nuclear deal with Iran.

Returning to JCPOA is a terrible mistake because the United States will never enter into that flawed agreement, Sen. Jim Einhoff said, claiming that while he and many of his colleagues in the US Congress would support diplomatic efforts to end the United States’ decades-long standoff with the Iranian government, a new and significantly improved agreement must be negotiated for them to consider supporting it.

Supporting former US President Donald Trump's unilateral withdrawal from the JCPOA, he claimed that it makes no sense to go back to the deal and lift sanctions on Iran.

The agreement lifted major sanctions on Tehran while only partially restricting its nuclear activities—and those restrictions begin expiring in 2025. The deal also failed to address the country's ongoing development of ballistic missiles, support for regional groups against US partners, he also claimed.

Any new US agreement with Iran must adhere to four main principles, he noted in an Op-ed published in Foreign Policy.  First, the new agreement with Tehran must be comprehensive and address Iran’s regional groups, limit its ballistic missile program, and close off every avenue to a nuclear weapons capability, he claimed while repeating American officials' baseless accusations against Tehran. 

Any negotiations [with Iran] should strongly take account of the views and concerns of the Zionist Regime and Arab partners of the US in the region, he claimed while Iran says the parties to the JCPOA are determined and no other parties can be added to the deal. 

Third, the senator continued, a resolution should be permanent. There cannot be sunset provisions that would ultimately allow Iran to possess a nuclear weapons capability, as is the case in the current deal.

Fourth, the implementation of any deal must be transparent, allowing for regular and unconditional inspections of Iran’s nuclear program, as well as forcing Iran to reveal all of its prior nuclear activities.

The claim comes as Tehran has reduced commitments to the JCPOA to create a balance in response to the unilateral withdrawal of the US from the deal in 2018. Iran says the steps are reversible as soon as other parties fulfill their commitments which includes the lifting of sanctions and normalizing trade and banking relations.

Highlighting that its nuclear program is entirely peaceful, Tehran says producing weapons of mass destruction is not on the agenda of the country as such has been banned by a fatwa of the Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei.

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