{"id":268146,"date":"2022-12-24T10:18:06","date_gmt":"2022-12-24T09:18:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/?p=268146"},"modified":"2023-01-18T16:24:55","modified_gmt":"2023-01-18T15:24:55","slug":"jcpoa-was-long-dead-snap-back-against-iran-regime-is-the-solution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/news\/jcpoa-was-long-dead-snap-back-against-iran-regime-is-the-solution\/","title":{"rendered":"JCPOA Was Long \u201cDead,\u201d Snap- Back Against Iran Regime Is the Solution\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/span> \"The<\/span><\/p>\n

It was revealed on Wednesday that US President Joe Biden had been caught on video<\/a> in November during a meeting with activists, affirming that the nuclear agreement between the Iranian regime and six world powers was \u201cdead.\u201d The revelation of that video came two days after representatives of the International Atomic Energy Agency left Iran following meetings to discuss issues preventing the revival of the 2015 deal. Meanwhile, these and other issues continued to be discussed among regional and Western powers at a conference in Jordan that was jointly organized by France and Iraq.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action went into effect in January 2016, but in 2018 the Trump administration pulled the US out of it, effectively placing it on life support. By the start of 2020, Tehran had ceased all compliance with the agreement, which traded relief from multilateral sanctions for very limited restrictions on Iran\u2019s uranium enrichment and related activities.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

After Biden took over the White House in 2021, negotiations restarted between the regime and the other JCPOA signatories \u2013 Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and China \u2013 with the US participating indirectly.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Those negotiations began in March 2021 but stalled for a five-month period following the appointment of Ebrahim Raisi<\/a> as the regime\u2019s president. When they resumed, the US and its European allies reported Iranian officials making more stringent demands of their interlocutors and reversing the progress that had supposedly been made prior to the pause. Nonetheless, there were several subsequent occasions when Western officials and commentators stated that an agreement to revive the JCPOA was imminent, only to be proven wrong by further extensions of the talks.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The negotiations technically still remain open, though there have been no new meetings since summertime. The prospect of such meetings became even more remote in September when anti-regime protests<\/a> broke out across Iran following the death of Mahsa Amini at the hands of the \u201cmorality police\u201d in Tehran.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Since shortly after the start of the uprising, the US government has maintained that rekindling the JCPOA is not a priority and that its focus shall remain on reacting to Iran\u2019s suppression of dissent and its provision of drones and other weaponry to Russia for use in the war on Ukraine.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This attitude presumably influenced President Biden\u2019s private declaration that the agreement was dead. But the administration had never said this publicly, and when challenged by attendees at the November 4 meeting, Biden indicated that it had no intention of doing so. This elicited some frustration from Iranian activists, including those who used the meeting to plainly declare that they wanted no agreements whatsoever between Western powers and the existing Iranian regime.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This sentiment has been reaffirmed in several venues over the past three months, such as a conference held in Washington last Saturday by the Organization of Iranian American Communities. The event featured speeches from several US officials and lawmakers, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, as well as Mrs. Maryam Rajavi,<\/a> the president-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

According to many experts, the protests in Iran have morphed into a revolution. Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in his speech that \u201cforty years of resistance against the regime’s brutal repression have now come to a head\u201d <\/span>while former Senator Joseph Lieberman used the conference<\/a> on December 8 to call for broader use of this terminology.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Rejecting that uprisings are random\/product of foreign meddling, @mikepompeo<\/a> said #IranProtests<\/a> are result of 40 years of organized opposition in #Iran<\/a>. Recognizing @Maryam_Rajavi<\/a>'s leadership, he added NCRI is laying the groundwork for a free, sovereign& democratic republic. pic.twitter.com\/Gnv9zyL0ig<\/a><\/p>\n

— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) December 21, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n