Talks for a new Iran deal have stalled, sending it to the state of improbability now, over Iran’s insistence the Biden administration drop the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) from the U.S. list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations.
Former President Donald Trump had designated the IRGC a state sponsor of terror in 2019 and the Biden administration is balking at removing the Iranian military branch from the terror list because the designation is outside the original terms of the Obama-era Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), according to Politico.
“The U.S. position has been that unless Iran agrees to take certain steps to assuage security concerns beyond the JCPOA, Washington will not lift the terror designation, which itself is beyond the JCPOA, especially given ongoing threats by the IRGC against [Americans],” a U.S. official told Politico.
Amid bipartisan opposition to the U.S. making concessions in a new JCPOA, “the Biden administration is highly unlikely at this point to drop the designation in the context of the JCPOA talks,” the source added.
Both Iran and the U.S. consider the terror designation a deal-breaker, and Iranian Americans for Liberty (IAL) Executive Director Bryan Leib told Newsmax in a statement Thursday night this should have stopped talks before they started.
“It should come as no surprise to the American people that diplomacy with the world’s leading fiscal sponsor of terrorism has failed,” Leib’s statement read.
“The Islamic Regime in Tehran are not partners for peace for the United States, Israel, or our Arab allies in the Middle East.
“The regime has threatened to kill former President Donald Trump, former Secretary Mike Pompeo and many other former and current U.S. officials.
The time is now for Joe Biden to pivot back to a maximum pressure and maximum sanctions campaign against the Mullahs in Tehran.”
A draft 27-page agreement had been readied, but now a deal is a long shot, according to Politico.