Iran reaction to Biden victory

Iran and the United States can fully reverse four years of Donald Trump and return to conditions before his presidency, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has said.

In a televised cabinet speech on Wednesday, Rouhani said if the incoming Joe Biden administration has the political will, Iran-US relations could be very different.

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“This can be a great solution to a large number of issues and completely change the path and conditions.”

However, Rouhani outlined what Iran would expect of future President Biden.

“We hope that in its first steps, the next US administration will explicitly condemn Trump’s policies on Iran,” the president said, calling the policies “anti-human rights and terroristic”.

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In May 2018, Trump unilaterally withdrew from a landmark nuclear deal reached between Iran and world powers in 2015 and imposed harsh economic sanctions on Tehran.

The sanctions only intensified as Iran started battling the deadliest outbreak COVID-19 pandemic of the Middle East, which has now killed nearly 50,000 people.

Iran has called the “maximum pressure” campaign of the Trump administration an instance of “economic and medical terrorism”, and has said a future US administration would have to pay compensation.

  alJazeera

That certainly won't happen if Republicans retain control of the Senate, but in the end, it might not be required.

“One of the great manifestations of the victory of the Iranian nation and the certain defeat of the enemy in this economic war is the end of the Trumpism era,” Rouhani said.

Words for his own people. He should be a little cautious with them.

“This person committed the worst crimes in US history against independent nations, especially the Iranian and Palestinian nations.”

Can't argue with that.

Rouhani’s remarks come one day after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Iran will resist and choose the path of “defusing sanctions and overcoming them” until a time when countries that target Iran come to the realisation that sanctions are useless.

“We tried the path of lifting sanctions once and negotiated for years, but it led to no results,” Khamenei said.

“If we can overcome sanctions through hard work and innovation and taking problems as they come, and the other side sees that sanctions are ineffective, they will gradually stop sanctioning.”

He obviously learned nothing from the Trump reign of terror.

Many Iranians’ hopes for a better future following the signing of a nuclear accord between Iran and world powers in 2015 were quashed some three years later when US President Donald Trump unilaterally abandoned the landmark deal.

Trump’s hawkish administration proceeded to impose waves of unforgiving economic sanctions that blacklisted the entire Iranian financial sector as part of a “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran that led, among other things, to soaring inflation and shortages of medicine.

Biden has promised to “change course” – but the path forward remains unclear and complicated.

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[Biden] has said the US will rejoin the [JCPOA nuclear] accord “as a starting point for follow-on negotiations” if Iran returns to compliance with it.

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With European efforts failing to secure Iran the economic benefits it was promised under the deal, the Iranian government began to gradually scale back a number of its JCPOA commitments exactly one year after the US reneged on the accord in May 2018.

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“Biden will face a slew of more pressing priorities and Tehran will be cautious to appear over-eager to negotiate and give away leverage before the June presidential election,” [Henry Rome, senior Iran analyst at the US-based political risk consultancy firm Eurasia Group,] told Al Jazeera.

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Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who is nearing the end of his second four-year tenure, will leave office in early August. His replacement will be decided in an election set for June 18, 2021.

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“I think what we’re likely to see is a stepped-up diplomatic effort from the E3 governments and the EU towards Tehran on seeing what kind of process and conditions are acceptable for the US to re-enter the deal, and indeed for Iran to come back to full compliance with the JCPOA’s nuclear commitments,” [Ellie Geranmayeh, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR),] told Al Jazeera.

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On the US side, though, things might be more complicated.

Over the past year, the Trump administration has taken a series of actions that would make it more difficult for a potential Biden administration to return to the nuclear deal and roll back sanctions.

This has mainly been done through hitting Iranian individuals and entities, some of whom were already sanctioned, with non-nuclear designations, including some related to “terrorism” and human rights.

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US Special Representative for Iran Elliott Abrams told The National a potential Biden administration could not lift all US sanctions on Iran, even if it wanted to.

  alJazeera

May we know why not?

ECFR’s Geranmayeh says the nuclear-related sanctions can and should be lifted to revitalise the JCPOA, but a Biden administration may run into problems in lifting other designations in Congress due to “political constraints” posed by Republicans who remain in control of the Senate.

Georgia, we're counting on you.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.