 After the months of negotiations, the Iran nuclear deal seems no closer to being revived. The deal has been in limbo since the US walked out of it in 2018 under Donald Trump. After Joe Biden came to power, the US administration kept insisting that it wanted to return to the deal. However, in practice, it has been extremely reluctant to take concrete steps to ensure the restoration of the deal. Despite multiple rounds of talks, the deal seems to be stuck at the last step, causing immense frustration to Iran and the other parties. Rania Khalik of Breakthrough News brings us up to date with the latest from the talks. So the JCPOA talks, or as they're better known, the Iran nuclear deal talks, appear frozen because they are. The US is kind of focused on the fact that midterm elections are coming up, the Biden administration is busy pouring fuel onto the Ukrainian fire and also provoking China with belligerent statements, but the administration still seems intent on sort of extracting itself from its Middle Eastern presence. Yet the talks to restore this deal with Iran have stalled. It's actually reached the point where you have prominent US allies like the former Swedish Prime Minister, Carl Biltz, and the former U4N policy chief, Javier Solana, openly and publicly accusing the Biden administration of passivity on Iran. They even wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post recently saying this. You also have Enrique Mora, the European Union's coordinator for Iran nuclear deal negotiations, who actually recently visited Iran to help reach a deal, also having expressed his frustration and sharing that same built in Solana article on Twitter. And of course, you have the French foreign ministry that has publicly complained that the draft agreement has been ready for two months. So, you know, Iran wants a deal. The US allies really want a deal. The US claims it wants to go back to the deal. So the question is, of course, why have attempts to salvage this agreement failed yet again? And it depends who you ask. So according to the Iranians, it's the US that's the problem. You know, they say the Americans are refusing to offer any guarantees that this deal, should they reenter it, won't be ripped up again by the next administration or even by the current administration. They won't offer guarantees that also if, you know, for example, businesses start doing business in Iran, that they won't be sanctioned in the future should the deal be ripped up. So this, of course, makes a deal almost useless for Iran because that specter of future sanctions will be hanging over anyone considering doing business with any Iranian entities. So for Iran, that's their complaint and they're not wrong. The US is refusing to compromise or, you know, offer any guarantees after they're the ones that violated the deal and ripped it up. There's also, of course, the issue of the IRGC. You know, a draft deal on restoring the nuclear pact has been ready and like the impasse for the last two months or despite the impasse for the last two months. But according to the US side, that impasse has been due to the issue of the Iranians demanding the removal of the IRGC, which is Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards, the removal of the IRGC from the US terror blacklist known as the Foreign Terrorist Organization List. So that's something the Biden administration is refusing to do, even though it was the Trump administration that added the IRGC to the FTO list. So basically, the US is refusing to budge and it's unclear why because a deal would, of course, be in the favor of this administration, at least, particularly as they seek to turn their attention to Russia and China. But also, the Iranians are saying that they're not the ones making a huge issue of the IRGC being on the FTO list, that it's just America's excuse for not moving forward with the deal. So it's kind of like he said, she said, but given the past, it's easy to kind of side with the Iranians here in terms of like viewing the Americans as the big obstacle. We know that lead American negotiator, Robert Malley, spent years, you know, hammering out a deal with Zareef, which on the Iranian side during the Obama administration. And he was quite passionate about restoring it under Biden, but his inclusion on the negotiating team and leading it doesn't really seem to matter because there are also hawks on that team. And of course, you know, it's also important to remember what often happens in US politics is that whatever belligerent thing the Republicans do during their time in charge, the Democrats have almost no political willpower to undo those things. So we see this on Iran. We've also seen this on Venezuela as the Biden administration has continued to recognize Juan Guaido. As the legitimate president of Venezuela, despite the fact that it was like Trump and any advisors that even came up with the policy of installing Juan Guaido, which was like a massive failure. But then there's also the fact that, you know, some American officials are concerned that it's not the success of the Iran deal. That's so important, but it's the failure of it, which is not because of like a direct necessarily like a direct American or Iranian confrontation that may take place. But because we'll see more actions and reactions in the Middle East, like Iran will be without a deal, they'll be less inclined to use their leverage over Iraqi resistance factions. They might feel more free to pressure the Americans who will be pressured to respond, which is what the kind of tit for tat we've seen taking place in Iraq since the deal fell apart. And at the same time, Israel will feel less restrained in attacking Iran, which will also be, you know, more inclined to respond. And then we enter this site, this so-called escalatory cycle, which is kind of where we are now, which could lead to a war even if you don't want one. And we have seen, you know, Iran's newfound boldness on these issues, like the strike on Erbil seemed to be a new president, the strike on the al-Assad base, the resistance access retaliating kind of across the region, the Houthis attacking, you know, the Saudis and the UAE. But I would add, you know, aside from this teal, I think what's more interesting is what's happening between the Iranians and the Gulf countries as the U.S. is less present in the region because we hear that unlike the American-Iranian talks, for example, the Saudi-Iranian talks are going much better and are far more advanced. And what brought the Saudis to the table is the Houthi attacks on Saudi oil facilities that threatened the Saudi economy. And then we've also seen increased cooperation between the UAE and Iran. This started a bit under Trump, but has, you know, increased greatly under Biden and some factions in the region attribute this to the Houthi and Iraqi resistance attacks on the UAE, which serve to, like, encourage them to be more cooperative in Yemen and Iraq. And then, of course, back to, like, the escalatory cycle I mentioned, aside from there being a positive end to all this between the Iranians and the Gulf states, there is the Iranian-Israeli relationship, which is an escalatory cycle, like I mentioned before. And it seems, you know, Israel just upped the ante where the Israelis took credit for the assassination of this IRGC officer a few weeks ago into Iran. And there was also around the same time a joint U.S.-Israeli military drill and the Israeli media at least claimed that the U.S. was practicing refueling Israeli planes or Israeli fighter pilots, I should say, during a simulated attack on Iran. So, ultimately, you know, as we get closer to 2024, U.S. presidential elections, I think it's going to be more difficult for Biden to make a deal with Iran. He has almost no political capital in the U.S. right now, as it is, his approval numbers are abysmal and the Democrats will likely lose control of Congress in the midterms in November. So as more time passes with these talks frozen and kind of going nowhere, it's looking less and less likely that a deal will happen. A key issue in the discussions has been Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The U.S. has continuously insisted on keeping the IRGC in the list of terrorist organizations, despite many observers pointing to its fertility. Time and again, the issue has cropped up as a stumbling block in the talks. Why is the U.S. so keen on this designation for the IRGC? The IRGC was already under sanction, so adding them to the foreign terrorist organization list while it was pretty belligerent to do that, it's also really a symbolic gesture because it's not like it limits their access to funds. They already had a mechanism for functioning, not just across the region, and functioning quite successfully, I should add. And that hasn't changed since adding them to the foreign terrorist organization list. So really it's just a symbolic maneuver is the Iranians want it taken off for symbolic reasons, but it's not like the end all be all. The Iranians at least are saying that it's the Americans who are accusing the Iranians of being so obsessed with removing them from this list. The Iranians are saying that's not the end all be all. They're willing to compromise on that as long as other demands are met that the U.S. also isn't agreeing to. And so the Iranians say that the U.S. is using the issue of the IRGC, a Baran's demand for the IRGC to be removed from the FTO list to say, oh, well, we can't do that. And that's why the talks aren't going forward. But moreover, it's like the political capital that I mentioned, when Republicans go far and do something like belligerent or warmongering, when a Democrat takes over, they don't wanna look weak, especially on issues where they have nothing to gain. And that's how I think a lot of times the Democratic administration see it. They have a lot to lose and nothing to gain from as they would see it from their side, from conceding anything to the Iranians, particularly this. If Biden, I imagine this is what his administration thinks I'm not there to actually see, but if his administration were to say, okay, fine, we'll remove the Iranians, we'll move the IRGC from this foreign terrorist organization list, they would be relentlessly attacked in the media as being soft on Iran, as being anti-Israel, as being in bed with anti-Semites, like all the things that get said, and I mean, across the political spectrum, because there's entire lobbying apparatus in the US on both sides of the aisle in both parties devoted to demonizing Iran and devoted to provoking a war with Iran. And so, and this is at a point, if this had been in 2020 or 2021, maybe there would have been more leeway to do this politically. But like I mentioned, Biden is doing terribly in his approval ratings. The Democrats are likely to lose big in the midterms. And so if they're going to risk any of their very small political capital, I don't think it's going to be on this issue because they have so little to gain. And as far as they see it, they're fine with the status quo. Yeah, there are some people in the administration who think it'd be better to have a deal for some of the reasons that I mentioned, but ultimately they're fine with their ongoing sanctions on Iran. Because at the end of the day, it's a way for them to control Iran or to try to, as they see it, diminish Iran's capacity to go against them in their interests across the region. So I think that's why this has become the sticking point in the mainstream about the IRGC issue is to really try to pin the blame on Iran and then to also look hawkish and strong in front of campaign donors and in front of Americans who, the Democrats often believe are more hawkish than they are.