Amid a “tsunami” of Iranian speculations about the US President-elect Joe Biden’s policy in dealing with Tehran, Iranian Majlis (Parliament) Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said the return of Washington to the Nuclear Deal should be followed by practical steps, including the resumption of oil sales and banking activities back to normal.
However, he expected the democratic administration would adopt a policy of smart pressures instead of the severe ones imposed by the current administration to modify Iran’s behavior.
"Biden will turn Trump's maximum pressure into smart pressure against the Iranian people," he said.
The Iranian Speaker said that for Iran, only practical measures taken by the Biden administration matter.
“If we see Iran’s oil sales returning to normal as well as the country’s banking activities and the trade between Iranian companies and the rest of the world, then we would show optimism toward him, though we are not hopeful about this,” Qalibaf said.
He explained that the Iranian people are determined to boost the country’s] components of economic power, welfare, and security and make any effective pressure against Iran impossible and costly.”
Qalibaf, whose name resonates as a possible presidential candidate for the next June elections, said people's lives should not be tied to the defeat and victory of people in the White House.
He said Biden was not at best different from former President Barack Obama, who designed the so-called paralyzing sanctions and was the first to violate US commitments.
“The record of promise-breaking and outright negative response from the Obama administration to European companies trying to get a written guarantee of trade with Iran still exists, and we have not forgotten that after this negative answer, John Kerry fraudulently announced the decision of European companies as the reason for maintaining sanctions," the speaker stated.
Separately, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Karim Sadjadpour said a Biden administration will be inheriting a pandemic and the economic crisis associated with it, so an obvious priority will be to try and deescalate foreign policy challenges such as Iran.
Sadjadpour said he thinks there are, broadly three views among Democrats when dealing with Iran.
He explained: “One camp believes a Biden administration should immediately return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), assuming that Tehran goes back into compliance. A second camp believes that a Biden administration should utilize the leverage inherited from the Trump administration in order to strengthen the JCPOA by addressing expiring sunset clauses, Iran’s missile program, and its regional behavior. A third camp believes that a more modest approach—a mild reduction in US sanctions in exchange for Iran’s freezing of its nuclear progress, also known as “freeze for freeze”—might be the most realistic one."
