Don’t write off the Iran nuclear deal just yet
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi still wants and needs the JCPOA more than Biden.
EU Foreign Policy Chief: JCPOA talks to resume ‘in coming days’
In the movie Godfather II, mafia boss Michael Corleone says that his rival Hyman Roth "has been dying of the same heart attack for twenty years."
After swearing never to do a Godfather reference in a column, this one came to mind, following the many epitaphs of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or Iran nuclear deal.
The JCPOA, signed in 2015, puts constraints on Iran’s nuclear programs in return for sanctions relief on Iran. It was first killed, or seemingly so, back in May 2018, when then-US President Donald Trump withdrew from the pact. While the other signatories — the EU, UK, France, Germany, Russia, China and Iran — stayed in the deal, the JCPOA ceased to function. US secondary sanctions made trade and business with Iran an ‘us or them’ proposition. Not surprisingly, countries and companies chose the US over Iran, to avoid US penalties from sanctions, which Washington piled on after the US withdrawal from the agreement.
