london —
Recent efforts to de-escalate tensions between the West and Iran over Tehran’s nuclear program have been set back by the recent Hamas terror attack on Israel, and Iran could seek to use the atomic program as leverage, according to analysts.
Western powers accuse Iran of supporting Hamas as a proxy militant group in the region, although they have not accused Tehran of direct involvement in the group’s October 7 cross-border terror attack on Israel, which killed more than 1,400 Israeli soldiers and civilians. Hamas is also holding more than 200 people hostage.
Israel’s subsequent bombing of Hamas targets in Gaza had killed almost 6,500 people as of Wednesday, according to Palestinian health officials, including more than 2,700 children.
Prior to the Hamas attack, relations between the West and Iran appeared to be cautiously improving. In September, the United States agreed on a prisoner swap with Tehran, brokered by Qatar. Five prisoners were exchanged on each side and Washington agreed to release $6 billion of frozen Iranian assets. The U.S. refroze that money following the attack by Hamas, which Washington has designated as a terrorist group.
“It was widely expected that after the detainee deal between Iran and the United States - and the de-escalatory understanding that the two countries had, which had brought about a much calmer context - that there was room for direct negotiations towards the end of October between Iran and the U.S., in Oman,” said Ali Vaez, Iran Project director at the International Crisis Group in Washington. “But that, I think, is now completely off the books, and there is probably no political space left for direct engagement between the two countries."
Whether there is engagement or not, Vaez continued, “the Iranian nuclear issue remains a major crisis, and I think the last thing that the Biden administration needs in the coming year, as it deals with the war between Israel and Hamas and the war in Ukraine, is a nuclear crisis in the Middle East.”
U.S. President Joe Biden is unlikely to seek further engagement with Iran on the nuclear program, according to Peter Jenkins, a former British ambassador to the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA.
“If Iran gets blamed, at least in part, for those [Hamas] attacks because those militias are considered to be Iran-backed, then I find it very hard to imagine that the Biden administration would want to expose itself to attack from the public or especially from Republicans in Congress and from Israel, or from Israeli lobbies like AIPAC, by opening negotiations with Iran,” Jenkins told VOA.
AIPAC is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a bipartisan, pro-Israel political action committee and lobbying group.
Iran is also unlikely to seek further talks, he added. “The current Iranian administration is not an enthusiast for the JCPOA. And what's just happened is that the United States has refrozen $6 billion - belonging to Iran, but long frozen - which the Biden administration had promised, pledged to unfreeze in return for the release of hostages. I assume that in Tehran people are feeling rather incensed about that,” Jenkins told VOA.
He was referring to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
The West should not treat the Iranian nuclear threat in isolation from other concerns such as Tehran’s support for militant proxies like Hamas, argued Behnam Ben Taleblu, an analyst with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington.
"For me, the concern is a larger picture of both sides of the Atlantic disconnecting the dots between the patron [Iran] and proxy problem and between the politics of the major Iran issue of the day: the JCPOA, the general issue of sanctions relief, and the more localized nature of the conflict. I think this disconnecting the dots is unhelpful to seeing the bigger picture as it's quite literally now unfolding in Gaza and in Israel,” Taleblu told VOA.
Talks in Vienna to revive the nuclear deal stalled last year, although neither side has said the negotiations are officially finished.
Then-U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the JCPOA in 2018, saying it had failed to halt Iran’s enrichment activities or curb its missile program and support for militant proxies in the region.
Tehran stopped complying with its commitments under the JCPOA soon afterward and removed the IAEA monitoring equipment in June 2022 while blocking some nuclear inspectors from visiting the country.