Biden seeks to reduce tensions with Iran before the 2024 US elections.
The English newspaper Telegraph has claimed in a report that US President Joe Biden has started a campaign to de-escalate tensions with Iran while seeking victory in his Middle East foreign policy on the eve of next year’s presidential election.
The United States is reportedly lobbying Iran to stop sending drones to Russia as part of a broader informal deal. According to this report, Biden is also looking to reduce the friction in the Middle East between Israel and Iran in the region.
The Telegraph said that as part of preliminary talks on the deal, Washington had signed a prisoner swap deal with Tehran, in exchange for which it is expected to release $6bn (£4.7bn) of Tehran’s frozen assets.
According to the terms of the prisoners’ agreement, five Iranian-American citizens will be released in exchange for the return of a group of Iranian citizens in American custody.
It is also said that Biden is looking for concessions from Iran regarding nuclear enrichment and that the new US sanctions against Tehran may be suspended, and this is part of the same “temporary agreement” on the nuclear crisis that some officials in Washington had previously mentioned. The situation could pave the way for more intensive talks on returning to the Obama-era nuclear deal, which eased sanctions on Tehran in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program.
In the continuation of this report, it is said that the intensification of the activities of the Biden administration regarding Iran is due to the desire of the American president to show that he can enter into an exchange with Iran.
The Telegraph also concluded that a significant warming of Iran-US relations could calm the situation on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon. Some experts also suspect that the $6 billion in assets blocked in South Korea could be used by Iran as an economic “lifeline” for its allies in the region, such as Syria. Charles Lister, director of the Middle East Institute, claimed in a tweet: “Assad needs an economic lifeline and only Iran can help Syria.”
Danny Citrinovich, an Iran analyst at the Israeli security think tank INSS, said the recent agreements send positive signals and show that both the US and Iran are serious about avoiding any escalation in the near future. “The prisoner exchange shows the willingness of both sides to reach some kind of short-term solution, only the problem is that it’s not a long-term solution,” he said.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump, the former president of the United States, criticized Joe Biden’s administration in the prisoner exchange agreement with Tehran, calling Biden’s strain against Tehran “disgraceful” and humiliating America in the world arena.
The Washington Examiner reported that Trump repeated some of his anti-Iranian rants in a video released Thursday local time: “This is another submission by Biden and further humiliation of the United States of America on the world stage.” But worse, this decision will be very deadly. “Biden gives six billion dollars to the main government sponsoring terrorism in the world.”
Continuing his rhetoric against Iran, Donald Trump claimed: “It is also guaranteed that Iran will use this money to advance its nuclear weapons program and will put Israel, the United States and the entire world at serious risk.” Something that would never happen in the Trump administration.
It should be mentioned that Iran and America have recently agreed to exchange some prisoners with each other.
