US President Joe Biden is intent on restoring the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran, with his chief negotiator, Robert Malley, is beginning to develop a road map on how to get there, the Foreign Policy reported.
According to sources close to European and US negotiators, Malley is expected to offer Tehran a Goldilocks-style deal: just enough sanctions relief so Iran will return to the pact, the FP reported on Thursday.
“Until now, no specific sanctions were discussed, only the broad outlines of ways to establish trust,” said Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group (ICG), who was senior advisor to Malley when the latter was head of the ICG.
“What they’re doing this week is to finalize a list of measures on both sides to come back into compliance with the accord. The next step is to sequence these to allow both sides to save face.”
This involves what a senior US official described as the “painstaking” process of separating out and agreeing to remove or ease some of the sanctions that former U.S. President Donald Trump imposed, according to the report.
These include more than 700 sanctions imposed outside the nuclear pact, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), that were levied at the end of Trump’s term.
Source: Foreign Policy