US will reportedly pull some Sanctions imposed on Iran by Trump Administration

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On Wednesday, a senior US official said that the Biden administration has provided examples of the kinds of sanctions on Iran it’s willing to lift in exchange for Iran’s return to compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal. He said the United States has presented Iran with baskets of sanctions through intermediaries. The official gave information but rejected to mention which sanctions fall into which baskets but said the third group is the most problematic. It is due to some measures that current officials believe may have been imposed by the former US administration to complicate any potential return to the deal. Point to be noted that former US President Donald Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018. Any sanctions relief being offered by the administration will be strongly opposed by Republicans in Congress.

US Congress Republicans announced draft legislation on Wednesday to codify the Trump-era sanctions in law. It is important that relief will also likely be opposed by Israel, which claims Iran as an existential threat, as well as Gulf Arab states wary of Iran’s increasing aggressiveness in the region. The 2015 deal gave Iran billions of dollars in sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program. But that relief largely disappeared after Trump pulled out of the deal and started a self-styled maximum pressure campaign against Tehran by re-imposing the earlier sanctions and adding new ones. However, the agreement allowed countries to continue imposing sanctions on Iran for non-nuclear reasons, such as support for terrorism and human rights abuses. The official said some of the additional US sanctions would have to be removed if Washington is to return to the deal.

It is noteworthy that the Trump administration had designated some nuclear sanctions as terrorism sanctions. These measures made it more difficult for a future president to return to the deal. Most of Trump’s imposed sanctions on Iran were clearly related to the nuclear program, including those that targeted companies and officials working on atomic matters, and would have to be removed if the US returned to the deal. The official said the Biden administration is still determining which of those were legitimately related to terrorism and human rights. However, there is still not any sanctions relief agreement between the US, Iran, or other parties in the indirect negotiations taking place in Vienna on reviving the nuclear deal. Iran is demanding the removal of the entire sanctions that the Trump administration imposed.