Biden Needs to Stay Cautious on Iran

His offer to join talks makes sense, but he shouldn’t submit to Tehran’s blackmail.

Yesterday, the U.S. offered to join talks it hopes will revive the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran — first bringing Tehran back into full compliance, then lifting the sanctions imposed by the Trump administration. So far, the Iranian regime has seemed uninterested. Its leaders have threatened that if President Joe Biden doesn’t ease U.S. sanctions by next week, they’ll limit international inspectors’ access to suspected nuclear sites.

Biden is right to talk, but he shouldn’t deviate from compliance first, then sanctions relief.

Iran has been moving in the wrong direction, abandoning obligation after obligation, enriching more uranium and to a higher level than the pact allows. Most recently, it’s produced uranium metal, used in nuclear warheads, and has threatened to renege on previous pledges never to develop such weapons. Now it’s saying that if sanctions aren’t lifted, it will shut down snap inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency from Feb. 23.

In the face of these provocations, Biden has so far been patient. He’s appointed an experienced negotiating team, which is consulting European allies and talking to other partners in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, including China. The U.S. should hold firm.

Iran’s moves are dangerous. Its scientists are steadily gaining knowledge and technical expertise that can’t be erased. But Iranian leaders are unlikely to provoke a full breach with the IAEA: They know that kicking out inspectors would only spark calls for more forthright action against their nuclear program. And, though Iran is closer than before to producing the fissile material for a bomb, Israeli estimates say it remains roughly two years away from a deliverable weapon.

With luck, the regime’s threats and Biden’s willingness to engage will enlist support from other signatories to the deal. While European leaders are eager to revive the pact, they were quick to criticize Iran for producing uranium metal and have warned against booting out inspectors. Even China, which has developed strong ties to Gulf nations aligned against Iran, knows that rising tensions in the region aren’t in its interests.

The U.S. and its European partners should make clear that Iran is making compromise less likely, not more. The fastest way to win sanctions relief would be for Iran to lift its latest threat and begin to reverse its previous violations. While that process is underway, the Biden administration could consider limited steps to increase humanitarian aid and otherwise relieve the pain of ordinary Iranians. That could build momentum to negotiate the “longer and stronger” pact that Biden rightly insists will be needed to address the original agreement’s shortcomings.

Iran’s leaders, for their part, should recognize that in Biden they have a willing negotiator. His moves to pause arms sales to U.S. allies in the Gulf, end the war in Yemen, and rescind the ban on visas for several Muslim-majority countries have already shown he means to play fair in the Middle East. Iran has a chance to engage in substantive diplomacy rather than continue its futile and dangerous brinkmanship. The regime should seize it.

—Editors: Nisid Hajari, Clive Crook.

To contact the senior editor responsible for Bloomberg Opinion’s editorials: David Shipley at davidshipley@bloomberg.net .