Iran submits "written response" to nuclear deal

AP Photo/Vahid Salemi

Yesterday was the latest “deadline” in the negotiations over the stalled Iran nuclear deal. It’s not as if anyone has paid any serious attention to all of these deadlines, but the European Union has been hosting the negotiations so they wanted to make it look official. Iran apparently took the idea seriously enough to provide a “written response” to the package that is allegedly on the table at this point. But as the Associated Press points out, the written response was really no response at all. Iran agreed to nothing and made vague references to the United States needing to be more “realistic” in its expectations, while still demanding that sanctions against their country be lifted. Now we’re waiting to see if the Biden administration will cave entirely and give Iran anything it wants in exchange for chalking up another political “win.”

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Iran said Tuesday it submitted a “written response” to what has been described as a final roadmap to restore its tattered nuclear deal with world powers.

Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency offered no details on the substance of its response, but suggested that Tehran still wouldn’t take the European Union-mediated proposal, despite warnings there would be no more negotiations.

“The differences are on three issues, in which the United States has expressed its verbal flexibility in two cases, but it should be included in the text,” the IRNA report said. “The third issue is related to guaranteeing the continuation of (the deal), which depends on the realism of the United States.”

Well, that’s just about as clear as mud, isn’t it? State Department spokesman Ned Price offered the American response and it was every bit as vague and empty as Iran’s statement. He said that the United States agreed with the European Union (on what we don’t know) and that “what could be negotiated has been negotiated.”

Price also accused Iran of making “unrealistic” demands. He claimed that if Iran wants the sanctions lifted, they will need to “alter their underlying conduct” and put an end to the “dangerous practices” that made the sanctions necessary in the first place.

Of course, we still have no idea of what Iran is offering or what Joe Biden’s people have put on the table. That’s because “the most transparent administration ever” has turned out to be the most secretive one in living memory. The latest phase of the negotiations has dragged on for more than a year and not a single press conference has been held describing what sort of deals have been offered to Tehran or what they might be willing to do in return. All we know is that some members of the negotiating team have quit and left government service in frustration over how it was all being handled. Beyond that, the media and the public have been left entirely in the dark as to what sort of agreement has been shaping up on our behalf with the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism

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Through all of this nonsense, Joe Biden has continued to criticize Donald Trump for “unilaterally” walking away from the deal. Is it any wonder why? The original deal crafted by the Obama administration was an unenforceable mess and Iran never held up their end of the bargain anyway. And we didn’t have an honest partner at the table in terms of improving that deal or crafting a new one entirely. So Trump bailed out on it. And now it would appear that Joe Biden’s team is slowly beginning to realize why that happened.

Iran has already shut down all of the monitoring cameras that the IAEA had installed at their nuclear facilities. Analysts agree that they already have enough fissionable material to create at least one nuclear weapon, assuming they haven’t done it already. Preventing them from moving forward may require some sort of tactical strike to set their program back a decade or so at this point. But the odds of Biden making the call on that one are somewhere between slim and none, and slim just left town.

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Ed Morrissey 10:00 PM | November 22, 2024
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