Meanwhile, Washington and Tehran sit down to negotiate again to try to recover the 2015 nuclear agreement
Iran celebrates the 43rd anniversary of the triumph of the Islamic revolution with the presentation of a new long-distance missile capable of hitting targets 1,450 kilometers away. The launch of the new projectile came a day after the return to nuclear dialogue in Vienna, where the United States and the Islamic Republic are trying to recover the 2015 agreement. The tone of both delegations is positive in this eighth round of talks, but the Iranians insist on the need to lift the sanctions imposed by Donald Trump and receive guarantees that they will not suffer unilateral punishments from Washington again.
The new domestically manufactured projectile has been baptized “Kheibar Shekan”, a name in Farsi that translates as ‘destroyer of Khaibar’, alluding to an ancient oasis inhabited by Jews located in present-day Saudi Arabia that was conquered by Muslim warriors in the seventh century. The chief of the Army General Staff, General Mohamed Baqeri, told official media that his country “will continue to increase the quality and quantity of missiles to confront the aggressors of global arrogance and the murderous Zionists,” alluding to the United States. and Israel.
The Iranian ballistic program is one of the most important in the Middle East, along with those of the Israelis or the Saudis. The nuclear agreement signed in 2015 by the 5+1, a group made up of the United States, Russia, China, France, Russia and Germany, guaranteed that for a decade the Islamic Republic would not manufacture atomic weapons because it could not enrich uranium to the level necessary for it. , but the missile program was left off the negotiating table and Iran has continued to develop its missiles.
Failure of Trump’s Strategy
The nuclear agreement worked until Trump decided to get out of it and reimpose sanctions on Tehran, despite the fact that it complied with the agreed points. The former president considered that it was the “worst possible pact” and decided to bet on the maximum pressure strategy. Three years later, this path has been a failure because the Iranians have been taking steps that move away from what was signed in Vienna, they produce uranium metal, necessary to produce atomic fuel, but which can also be used to make the core of a nuclear warhead, they are enriching uranium to a purity of 60 percent and have started state-of-the-art centrifuges. From Tehran they assure that they are reversible pressure measures at the same moment that Washington withdraws the punishments.
At stake in Vienna is the word of Joe Biden, who promised during the campaign to recover the agreement reached by Barack Obama, and the future of a Middle East with a sanctions-free Iran. The Iranians have stopped talking for weeks about demanding compensation for Trump’s unilateral decision to break the pact, which entailed punishments that sank the national economy because they prevented him from selling oil. This gesture by Iran, together with the end of the punishments, is the key to return to the thaw between Iranians and Americans.
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