The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) members are getting ready to go back to the negotiation table. The stakes are high, but expectations are low. Much has changed since the talks were suspended in June of this year.
For one, Iranian faces at the table are new and already evoke a sense of unease. The country has moved far outside the gambit of the nuclear deal. Moreover, for the first time since trying to revive the agreement, the Biden administration is talking of a "Plan B."
A New Iran Regime
The nuclear deal talks were suspended after Iranians elected a new President in their general elections. Soon after taking office, the radical and IRGC affiliated regime headed by President Ebrahim Raisi replaced Ali Akbar Salehi, the chief architect of the JCPOA and the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) for close to a decade, with Mohammad Eslami, an UN-sanctioned engineer, as the nation's top atomic official.
