Democrat President Joe Biden is prepared to remove sanctions on the Islamic Republic of Iran — the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism — to resume compliance with the Obama administration’s controversial Iran nuclear deal.
“We are prepared to take the steps necessary to return to compliance with the JCPOA, including by lifting sanctions that are inconsistent with the JCPOA,” State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters. “I am not in a position here to give you chapter and verse on what those might be.”
JCPOA, which stands for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, was the name of the original deal. The news came as hundreds of Iranian-American activists urged Biden to not ease sanctions on Iran.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a stern warning on Wednesday to the United States and to the international community that it will not accept any deal that allows a path for Iran to develop nuclear weapons.
“A nuclear agreement with Iran is again on the table, but history has taught us that agreements like this with extremist regimes are worth as much as garlic peel,” Netanyahu said. “To our best friends I say – an agreement with Iran which paves its way to nuclear weapons that threaten us with destruction – an agreement like this will not bind us.”
“Only one thing binds us, to prevent those who seek to destroy us from carrying out their plans. During the Holocaust we did not have the power to protect ourselves and we did not have the privilege of sovereignty. We had no rights, no state, and no defense,” he continued. “Today we have a state, we have the power to defend ourselves and we have the natural and full right as the sovereign state of the Jewish people to protect ourselves from our enemies.”
National security expert Tim Morrison, who was on Trump’s National Security Council and is currently a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, told The Daily Wire in February that the Biden administration was giving up all leverage that the United States had over Iran as it tried to restart the “dangerously flawed” deal.
“The Biden Administration is repeating the mistakes of the Obama Administration,” Morrison said. “It’s making concessions to get nothing more than a meeting. The Iran deal was dangerously flawed in 2015. In 2021, with key provisions expired, it’s simply national security malpractice to return to that deal. The Trump Administration bequeathed Biden tremendous leverage over Iran—it must not squander it.”
Andrea Stricker, Research Fellow at Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told The Daily Wire that Americans should expect to see an “Obama nuclear deal redux.”
“The Biden administration will remove sanctions against Iran’s supreme leader, terrorist entities, and illicit financial sector, to name a few,” she added. “The JCPOA is premised on sanctions relief for Tehran’s terror machine in return for quickly expiring nuclear limits. The International Atomic Energy Agency’s investigation into Iran’s nuclear activities will be quietly shelved. It will be up to Congress and the American people to say no to this capitulation. Indefinite restraints across all of Iran’s malign activities are needed, including the release of hostages.”
This report has been updated to include additional information.