Last week, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez (D-NJ) took to the Senate floor to rip the Biden’s administration’s Iran policy to shreds. In surprisingly harsh terms, Menendez spent an hour eviscerating the White House over its so-far unsuccessful effort to revive the Obama administration’s Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA.

“I ask why we would try to simply go back to the JCPOA,” Menendez said, “a deal that was not sufficient in the first place — and still doesn’t address some of the most serious national security concerns we have?”

The Biden administration came to office with a two-step plan for addressing the inadequacies of the JCPOA. Step 1: Quickly reach agreement on a mutual return by the United States and Iran to full compliance. Step 2: Negotiate a “longer and stronger” follow-on agreement that would remedy the deal’s weaknesses, including, most importantly, the sunset provisions under which all the deal's restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program expire, in some cases before the end of Biden’s presidential term.

Alas, after a year of effort, the administration is still stuck on step 1. There appear to be two principal snags; Iran is demanding more relief from US sanctions than was promised under the JCPOA, and also is insisting on guarantees that the United States will never again withdraw from the agreement.