Biden exploiting Trump’s sanctions to arm-twist Iran: Report

An article published on the website of Noor News — which is affiliated with Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) — on Wednesday, said the Biden administration is falsely claiming that Iran is making demands that “go beyond” the Iran nuclear deal.

US State Department spokesman Ned Price has been indicating repeatedly that an Iranian demand that the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) be taken off an American list of foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs) “goes beyond” the Iran deal and necessitates negotiations that also go beyond the agreement, the article said.

This is while under the 2015 Iran deal — to which the US hopes to return with indirect negotiations with Iran in Vienna — any further US sanctions on Iran would have been prohibited, meaning that Trump’s bans, including his FTO designation of the IRGC, were illegal under the deal itself. Therefore, an Iranian demand to cancel that designation does not “go beyond” the agreement, it said.

The article indicated that the Biden administration was now acting in bad faith by using the Trump sanctions to ask Iran to either settle with less than it is due under the 2015 deal or agree to negotiations “beyond” the pact — which the Islamic Republic has said will never happen.

By engaging in the media hype about “Iran making extra demands,” the Biden administration is hoping to put the onus on the Islamic Republic, the article said.

“Iran will never negotiate its defensive and regional might, which guarantee its authority and security, and the West has to forget about such excessive demands that go beyond the JCPOA forever,” it said, using an abbreviation to refer to the Iran nuclear deal.