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Last week's attack on author Salman Rushdie and the indictment of an Iranian national in a plot to kill former national security adviser John Bolton have given the Biden administration new headaches as it attempts to negotiate a return to the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. A resolution may be tantalizingly close. But as the US and Europe weigh Iran's latest response to an EU proposal described as the West's final offer, the administration faces new and potentially insurmountable domestic political hurdles to forging a lasting agreement. Deal critics in Congress who have long vowed to blow up any pact have ratcheted up their opposition to negotiations with a country whose leadership has refused to rescind the death threats against Rushdie or Bolton. Iran also vows to avenge the Trump administration's 2020 assassination of a top Iranian general by killing former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Iran envoy Brian Hook, both of whom remain under 24/7 taxpayer-paid security ...
A top Iranian official said on Monday that his country is seeking creative ways to restore its nuclear deal with world powers after Russia's foreign minister linked sanctions on Moscow over its war on Ukraine to the ongoing negotiations. The tweet by Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of Iran's powerful Supreme National Security Council, offers the first high-level acknowledgment of the demands of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Vienna participants act & react based on interests and it's understandable, Shamkhani wrote. Our interactions ... are also solely driven by our people's interests. Thus, we're assessing new elements that bear on the negotiations and will accordingly seek creative ways to expedite a solution. In recent days, negotiators on all sides in Vienna had signalled that a potential deal was close as the head of the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agreed to a timetable with Iran for it disclose answers to long-standing questions it had about Tehran's program. But