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Biden Promised to Restore the Iran Nuclear Deal. Now It Risks Derailment. [1]

['David E. Sanger', 'Lara Jakes', 'Farnaz Fassihi']

Date: 2021-07-31

WASHINGTON — Days before a new hard-line president is set to be inaugurated in Iran, Biden administration officials have turned sharply pessimistic about their chances of quickly restoring the nuclear deal that President Donald J. Trump dismantled, fearing that the new government in Tehran is speeding ahead on nuclear research and production and preparing new demands for the United States.

The concerns are a reversal from just a month ago, when American negotiators, based in part on assurances from the departing Iranian government, believed they were on the cusp of reaching a deal before Ebrahim Raisi, 60, a deeply conservative former head of the judiciary, takes office on Thursday. In June, they were so confident that another round of talks was imminent that a leading American negotiator left his clothes in storage at a hotel in Vienna, where the talks took place through European intermediaries for the past four months.

That session never happened. International inspectors have been virtually blinded. At Iran’s major enrichment site at Natanz, centrifuges are spinning at supersonic speeds, beginning to enrich small amounts of nuclear fuel at near bomb-grade. Elsewhere, some uranium is being turned to metallic form — for medical purposes, the Iranians insist, though the technology is also useful for forming warheads.

It is unclear whether Mr. Raisi will retain the existing Iranian negotiating team or replace them with his own loyalists, who will presumably be determined to show they can drive a harder bargain, getting more sanctions relief in return for temporary limits on Iran’s nuclear activities.

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[1] Url: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/31/us/politics/biden-iran-nuclear-deal.html

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