
President Biden’s efforts to strike a new nuclear deal with Iran are continuing apace, as worries about significant U.S. concessions emerge. The latest reports out of the indirect talks being facilitated by the EU indicate that Washington and Tehran are getting closer to a deal; the Biden administration is reportedly waiting on an Iranian response to its most recent proposal from mid August. That doesn’t necessarily mean an agreement is imminent, but there’s some reason to believe that one may emerge in the coming weeks. Israeli officials, sensing this, have begun a more-or-less public effort to warn the administration about the consequences of a potential deal that by one estimate would grant Iran over $1 trillion in sanctions relief.
Even where the administration has stuck to its guns and flatly rejected Iran’s demands, it is making unseemly concessions, as it has on U.S. sanctions targeting the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Biden’s negotiators have ruled out Tehran’s demands that the State Department remove the IRGC from its foreign terrorist organization list — which would shield it from lawsuits and allow its members to secure U.S. visas, among other things. Instead, Politico reported that the White House may opt for a compromise, whereby the U.S. declines to strictly enforce measures preventing non-U.S. Western companies from transactions with the guards.