When Joe Biden came into office in January 2021, he signaled a sea change in American policy toward Iran, including pushing to re-enter the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreed under President Barack Obama.
That deal, lauded by Democrats as preventing Iran from achieving its nuclear aims, would have, in reality, made the Iranian nuclear threat worse. Returning to the deal abrogated by President Donald Trump would reward Iran for its malign regional actions and its ignoring of JCPOA limits in the first place. Still, for the first year and a half of his term, Biden and his foreign policy team sought to lure the Iranians back to the negotiating table.
Biden said in February 2021 that his administration was “prepared to reengage in negotiations” with Iran. That April, he briefly scolded the Iranians for increasing uranium enrichment levels before totally undermining that sentiment, stating, “We are, though, nonetheless pleased that Iran has continued to agree to engage in discussions, indirect discussions with us and with our partners on how we move forward and what is needed to allow us to move back into the [JCPOA], and so that we are a part of it again.” Even through last July, Biden sought a return to the nuclear deal, but his tune changed drastically thereafter.
In the lead-up to the 2022 midterm election, the administration castigated Iran for its brutal crackdown on anti-government protests, applied sanctions to Iranian entities for supplying Russia’s war effort in Ukraine, and privately declared that the Iran
