Not content with setting fire to the biggest nuclear plant in Europe last week as part of its vicious assault on Ukraine, Vladimir Putin’s Russia is now contemplating blowing up attempts to revive the nuclear restraints deal signed with Iran in 2015, a beacon of multilateral diplomacy sabotaged by Donald Trump’s unilateral withdrawal of the US in 2018.
For nearly a year, EU-hosted talks in Vienna have sputtered along and against all odds brought Iran — now firmly under the thumb of hardline theocrats — closer to the US. President Joe Biden has made resuscitating the 2015 accord the centrepiece of his Middle East policy.
Refloating the prosaically named Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action is now tantalisingly close. There are outstanding Iranian concerns. Tehran demands cast-iron assurances that no future US administration can pull out again — a guarantee neither Biden nor any other president could possibly give. It also wants the lifting of all Trump’s sanctions, not just the reimposed nuclear ones but penalties for its aggressive regional behaviour through proxy militias with missiles.