Top Iranian officials have made clear over many weeks that it is the U.S. that must come back into compliance with the JCPOA first and that Iran is not going to renegotiate an agreement that it has already agreed to. To make the point clear to the American foreign policy making establishment, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif posted an article in the Council on Foreign Relations’ journal Foreign Affairs yesterday in which he minced no words.
“The new administration in Washington has a fundamental choice to make. It can embrace the failed policies of the Trump Administration and continue down the path of disdain for international cooperation and international law—a contempt powerfully evident in the United States’ decision in 2018 to unilaterally withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action,” Zarif wrote at the outset. He continued, Biden “can choose a better path by ending Trump’s failed policy of ‘maximum pressure’ and returning to the deal his predecessor abandoned. If he does, Iran will likewise return to full implementation of our commitments under the nuclear deal. But if Washington instead insists on extracting concessions, then this opportunity will be lost….
“We have always made it abundantly clear that we will respond positively to any initiative for regional dialogue advanced in good faith. To us, goodwill begets goodwill….
