Iran is claiming that the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden offered to remove 1,040 sanctions that were imposed during the administration of President Donald Trump, as Biden tries to entice Iran to resume the 2015 nuclear deal.
The original deal lifted sanctions on Iran and gave it access to billions of dollars in return for commitments to slow nuclear research and development for about a decade. Iran continued to pursue nuclear weapons, despite the deal.
The Times of Israel reported Wednesday:
As part of nuclear talks in Vienna, Washington has agreed to lift sanctions on Iran’s oil and shipping sectors, as well as to remove several senior officials from its blacklists, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s chief of staff said Wednesday.
“All issues of insurance, oil and shipping have been agreed, and about 1,040 sanctions from the Trump era will be lifted according to this agreement,” Mahmoud Vaezi told reporters on the sidelines of Wednesday’s cabinet meeting.
Officials who would have sanctions removed included several figures from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s inner circle, he said.
Iran’s incoming president, Ebrahim Raisi, has declared that Iran will not agree to restrictions on its ballistic missile development or its support for terrorism throughout the region as a condition to the resumption of the nuclear deal.
President Trump withdrew the U.S. from the deal in 2018 and applied new sanctions to Iran over human rights abuses, terrorism, and nuclear concerns. Iran has resumed nuclear enrichment, but has also suffered setbacks — partly as the result of apparent sabotage by Israel, which detonated an explosive at the underground Natanz facility earlier this year.
Israel has said that it will not consider itself bound by any renewed nuclear deal, and outgoing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggested that it will act to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear power, with or without a deal, or U.S. support.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.