Since the United States dropped the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran in 2018, the United States has been barred from holding direct talks with Iran and now mediators are needed for all communication between the two states. The 2015 deal was struck in order to loosen the constricting trade embargo on Iran enacted by the United States in 1995. The trade embargo was in response to the deteriorating relations between the United States and Iran, generally considered to be due to Iran’s regime change in the Iranian Revolution in 1979 when the Shah, which the United States had been on good terms with, was deposed. Simultaneously, the deal was also intended to instead restrict Iran’s nuclear program, thus slowing any progress to be made in this undertaking. Now, both of these goals have fallen to the wayside and United States efforts to restore an agreement with Iran have been impeded by the hostage situation in Iran where four Americans, Morad Tahbaz, Emad Shargi, and Siamak Namazi and his father Baquer Namazi are being held by Iran, the former three in prison and the latter unallowed transport to leave Iran. While the United States insists that the two are separate points of negotiation, they are still inherently connected with US interest and with each other, as evidenced by the multiple allusions made by officials from the Biden Administration to the Namazis’ lawyer and from Robert Malley, the United States Special Envoy for Iran. It is quite clear the United States wants Iran to know that the nature of a hostage situation makes it hard to come to any favorable agreements on other matters between states.
Considering the previous hostage crisis with Iran in 1979 and the ensuing Algiers Accords, it can be assumed that Iran will want the United States to tamper its involvement in its affairs in order to bring the hostages home, and from Malley’s statement, “it is very hard to imagine getting back into the nuclear deal while four innocent Americans are being held hostage by Iran,” there is a good chance it could affect the accord since the aim is to finish the hostage negotiations before solidifying the new deal. Especially because of how suddenly the US backed out of the deal in 2018, Iran will not be overly trusting of the United States and from Iran’s point of view, there is no reason to have confidence that future presidents will continue to comply with the terms that Biden will set in any accord made this year. Therefore, Iran might play hardball in the ongoing talks and force a more favorable deal out of the United States as there is pressure for the Biden Administration to reinstate the deal before the end of the term. This gives Iran leverage with their hostages as United States officials have implied that the United States wants to secure the hostages before coming to an agreement on the deal. Meanwhile, Iran has been able to deal with the US sanctions between 1979 when they were first put in place and 2015 when the original nuclear deal was established, meaning they do not have the same urgency as the US. Obviously, the ramifications of this deal, as it pertains to Iran’s nuclear program, are extremely influential on the rest of the region, as Iran would become only the tenth country to possess nuclear weapons in the world. Out of the countries this class considers part of Central Asia, Iran would be the first to obtain nuclear weapons, the closest other countries being Israel in the Middle East and Pakistan in South Asia. Anytime the access to nuclear weapons spreads, so too does the potential for violence and Iran’s nuclear program would bring even more of that potential to the Middle East and Central Asia.
The relationship between the United States and Iran shows a real world example of how a change in foreign policy can come from the individual level, as the Trump Administration in 2018 chose to heavily sanction Iran as a way to pursue its goals while the Obama Administration before and the Biden Administration after both chose to go the more diplomatic route. Heavy sanctioning is more of a hardline realist approach to any situation, a way to force cooperation rather than what Obama and Biden chose which was compromising with Iran in order to push the goals of the American National Interest through diplomacy.