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“As a result, Raisi has supported the resumption of the JCPOA Vienna negotiations but is dragging the process along in order to obtain more concessions from Washington. A successful rehabilitation of the nuclear deal will see Iran and the United States return to compliance and Washington’s lifting of the sanctions imposed during the Trump presidency.”
Macroeconomic policy failures and corruption are two of the principal internal economic challenges the government still faces, assesses the academic, adding: “Addressing them will require long-term planning, commitment and a strategy to resolve broader issues with the international community.”
2.2 Iran’s supreme leader unhappy US has given no guarantee it won’t in future abandon reinstated nuclear deal
Iran's supreme leader on July 28 raised concerns that Washington has given no guarantee that should Tehran agree to a revival of the 2015 nuclear deal, the US will not at some point abandon the pact again.
The issue is a challenging one given that it is not feasible that the current Biden administration in the US could erect an immovable barrier to a successor administration pulling the US out of the nuclear deal, or JCPOA, a second time. Tehran is still raw over how Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, broke international convention by in May 2018, at a time when UN inspectors said Iran was in full compliance with the JCPOA, unilaterally ending American participation in the multilateral accord painstakingly negotiated by Iran and six major powers. To Iranian hardline politicians, who from next week will have control of the presidency as well as the parliament, the move simply confirmed their contention that the US is never to be trusted.
"The Americans acted completely cowardly and maliciously," state TV quoted the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as saying. "They once violated the nuclear deal at no cost by exiting it. Now they explicitly say that they cannot give guarantees that it would not happen again."
He added that “experience has shown that trusting the West does not work”.
A US State Department spokesperson responded in a statement that the Biden administration "has been sincere and steadfast in pursuing a path of meaningful diplomacy to achieve a mutual return to compliance [with the agreement].”
The sixth round of indirect talks between Tehran and Washington on reviving the JCPOA adjourned on June 20, two days after hardline cleric Ebrahim Raisi was elected president of the Islamic Republic. There is as yet no word on when the next round of negotiations will resume.
Like Khamenei, Raisi has backed the reinstatement of the nuclear pact but officials have said that his government might switch Iran’s stance in the talks to "a hardline" approach.
Under the JCPOA, Iran agreed to restrict its nuclear development programme to ensure it remains purely civilian in return for the removal of heavy sanctions. Khamenei also referred to a sentence that he said “stubborn” Washington insists on adding to the nuclear deal text. "By adding this sentence, they want
7 IRAN Country Report August 2021 www.intellinews.com