US President Joe Biden was inaugurated just two weeks ago, but he has already signed dozens of executive orders addressing pressing issues such as coordinating the US government-wide Covid-19 response, Covid-19 economic relief, immigration enforcement policies and the US re-joining the Paris Climate Accord and the World Health Organisation (WHO). The Biden administration is moving fast on many issues, but not fast enough on re-joining the Iran nuclear deal, according to European officials. In London, Paris and Berlin, there are concerns that the new US administration, under pressure from Israel and various regional powers, does not want to take the first step to returning to the deal. Instead, Washington wants Iran to resume full compliance with the deal by reversing measures it took to protest against the sweeping sanctions imposed by former president Donald Trump in 2018. For Biden, Tehran must reduce its uranium enrichment to 2015 deal levels before the US takes any steps towards re-joining the nuclear deal. So far, Iran has not been willing to engage with Biden's negotiation strategy. Tehran has its own preconditions before re-engaging with the US administration, among them lifting the sanctions Trump imposed on Iran in his maximum-pressure campaign after leaving the deal in 2018. Europe now sees a narrow window for Tehran and Washington to restore the nuclear deal. According to European officials, direct contacts between Washington and Tehran should begin to lay down a roadmap to reviving the nuclear deal. The Europeans believe that time wasted before the start of the dialogue may complicate matters further and open the door to a sudden escalation on one or more regional fronts. In addition, Iran faces presidential elections next June, and its reformers are in dire need of good news to keep the presidency within the moderate camp after the departure of current Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. With the timetable already tight and direct channels of communication between the Americans and Iranians delayed, it will become more and more difficult to implement a breakthrough within the next two months, meaning that Rouhani and the moderates may suffer in the upcoming elections in Iran. This is a scenario feared by France, Germany and Britain. For them, keeping reformers and moderates at the centre of Iranian politics over the coming few years will guarantee prospects for reviving the nuclear agreement and expanding it in a sustainable and enduring fashion. Nevertheless, the Europeans realise that they do not face the same pressures as Biden regarding restoring the nuclear deal. There has been pressure on him from Republicans in the US, Israeli pressure groups and some Middle Eastern countries to reformulate the nuclear agreement to revise it in three ways. First, they want to see the deal extended in terms of its timeframe. The original nuclear agreement set a timeframe for Iran's commitment to reduce uranium enrichment levels for a period of 15 years. Many Biden administration officials now realise that they need to re-negotiate with Iran to extend the timeframe of the agreement. Second, they want to see the deal made more comprehensive. The 2015 deal only addressed the Iranian nuclear programme, and there have been attempts to add restrictions to the Iranian ballistic-missile programme as well. Third, they want to see a linking of the military to the political, meaning that the nuclear deal should be linked to Tehran's regional behaviour in the Middle East. Ideally, the Biden team wants a new nuclear deal that is “longer, stronger and also a broader deal” to curb Iran's missiles and proxies. But this is something that Iran has previously refused to consider. With time now running out before the June elections in Iran, Tehran is turning to the EU for assistance. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif asked the EU on Monday to coordinate a synchronised return of both Washington and Tehran to the nuclear deal after the diplomatic standoff on who should take the first step. Javad Zarif, who had previously demanded an end to the sanctions before Iran acted, offered a way forward during an interview on the US channel CNN. “You know, clearly, there can be a mechanism to basically either synchronise it or coordinate what can be done,” he said, adding that EU Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell should play a role as coordinator of the 2015 agreement that also included Britain, France and Germany, as well as Russia and China. Borrell could “sort of choreograph the actions that are needed to be taken by the United States and the actions that are needed to be taken by Iran,” Zarif said. “The United States needs to come back into compliance, and Iran will be ready immediately to respond. The timing is not the issue.” The Biden administration does not want to look soft on Iran, but officials argue that Trump's policy backfired, with Iran moving away from the nuclear deal and intensifying its opposition to US interests. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has warned that Iran could now produce enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon within “a few months.” But he again cautioned that a return to the nuclear accord should not be swift. “If it decides to come back into the agreement – and that may take some time – then it's going to take us some time to assess whether they, in fact, had made good on their obligations,” Blinken told the US channel NBC in an interview on Monday. Zarif in his interview said that Iran could return to its previous commitments “in less than a day.” “Some may take a few days or weeks, but it won't take any longer than it would take the United States to implement executive orders that are necessary to put Iran's oil, banking, transportation and other areas that president Trump violated back into operation,” Zarif said. Last week, one senior US state department official said that the negotiations remained in the distance, while a second disputed reports that the US and Iran had already begun back-channel talks. Nonetheless, state department officials said there was hope for “a way forward,” noting the dire state of Iran's economy. Even so, the lack of a timetable is a worry for Europe. Britain, France and Germany are eager to return to the 2015 accord and have tried to keep it intact even as Tehran pushed past its limits. The waiting game between Tehran and Washington is not the way forward as far as the EU is concerned. While there is no “Biden doctrine” yet on foreign policy, he does not seem to operate on the principle of “America first”. The new American president is a pragmatic politician, and this is a source of comfort in Europe. Faced with increasing pressures from Israel and other regional powers, Biden and his team have been echoing the argument made for some time: that any deal with Iran, even if flawed, is less dangerous regionally and globally than no deal at all.
