Abbas Amanat

in exchange for removing the sanctions.

But this never worked, in a matter of fact, in a very successful, satisfactory way for the Iranians or for the Americans, particularly under Trump administration, which I think foolishly decided to scrap

the agreement that was reached under President Obama.

Like many other policies that was implemented under Trump administration, this created a major problem.

That is how to, under Biden, how to try to come up with a new nuclear agreement with Iran.

In this process, since 2016,

where the United States withdrew from the agreement, Iran felt comfortable to try to go and do whatever they want without any kind of being monitored by the international community.

And that's the situation now.

We don't know whether Iran is really sincere under the present regime,

to negotiate a deal.

We don't know that the United States is willing to do so.

And it seems that now what is happening in terms of the protests in the Iranian streets makes it even harder in a public eye to try to negotiate a deal with Iran.

Because that means in the minds of many,

and with some justification, that if the nuclear agreement would result in the removal of many of these sanctions, millions, billions,

as the result of the removal of the sanctions and Iran's ability to sell its oil in the international market without any restrictions, means that the Iranian government is going to become even more powerful, more financially secure in order to suppress its own people.

So that's the agreement that goes against

coming to terms with Iran.

But the problem is that there is no clear alternative, even I'm not particularly personally favorable for this agreement to be ratified.

But the alternative is very difficult.

There's no way to try to see what can be done.