As Anxiety Over Iran Nuclear Talks Rises, U.S. Loses a Key Negotiator

As Israelis and Arab partners bolster defenses against Iran, the State Department team charged with appeasing the mullahs is falling apart.A former American ambassador to Israel who’d been working on the Iran deal, Daniel Shapiro, announced on his Twitter account yesterday that he would join a Washington-based foreign policy think tank, the Atlantic Council. Mr. Shapiro is the fourth official to depart the group led by President Biden’s Iran envoy, Robert Malley, who is attempting to salvage a deal to renew the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Negotiations have been conducted since last fall at a Vienna hotel, where Iranian and American envoys sit in separate rooms while European and, notably, Russian envoys relay messages between the two teams. Currently all involved are back in their capitals, as the talks hit several snags that blocked a final agreement. Most importantly, the Iranian team is demanding a removal of its top terrorist group, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, from the State Department’s list of terror organizations. Israelis and Iran’s Arab neighbors that met over the weekend at Sde Boker in southern Israel explicitly said they oppose such a removal. So do Republicans in Washington as well as at least two influential Democratic senators, Robert Menendez and Benjamin Cardin. That growing opposition in Mideast and Western capitals, and Iran’s insistence that no deal is possible without delisting the IRGC, are leading even the most vocal cheerleaders for JCPOA renewal to wonder if Iran is serious about a deal. The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Joseph Borrel, said this morning Iran is holding up the talks, which are “not getting to an end.” He added: “It would be a shame not to reach some sort of an agreement when we’re so near to reaching one, but I cannot guarantee that we will reach an agreement.” While Iran leads negotiators seemingly by the nose, the Islamic regime in Tehran is obstructing inspections of its facilities and ratcheting up uranium enrichment and other nuclear-related production. That might explain the growing anxiety in places like Jerusalem, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, and even Washington. Those anxieties may well have hastened Mr. Shapiro’s decision to depart from Mr. Malley’s team. As President Obama’s envoy in Tel Aviv, Mr. Shapiro has endeared himself even to the Israelis most opposed to America’s Mideast policies of those days. He charmed them with television and radio appearances, which he conducted in fluent Hebrew.That led the State Department to pick him as someone who could approximate Israeli sensibilities and bring them to a team charged with renewing a deal opposed by most Israelis. When several months ago a story leaked that three members departed Mr. Malley’s team, the State Department said they were simply reassigned.Mr. Shapiro, by contrast, yesterday publicly announced he is joining the Atlantic Council on his Twitter account. “I’m thrilled that my first day at @ACMiddleEast coincided with the #Negev_Summit,” Mr. Shapiro wrote in a thread. “Multiple Arab foreign ministers coming to a summit in Israel is something most Israelis and Arabs did not expect to see in their lifetimes. Truly historic.”In the thread, the newly minted think-tanker wrote that it’s important to assure that the budding coalition of Israelis and Arabs “remains aligned with US interests on such issues as Russia, China, Iran, and the Palestinians.”Whether intentional or not, Mr. Shapiro’s departure signals such alignment between Washington and its Mideast allies is impossible as long as Mr. Malley continues to woo Iran for a deal, and as long as America’s endless concessions are met with Tehran’s demands for more giveaways.

As Anxiety Over Iran Nuclear Talks Rises, U.S. Loses a Key Negotiator

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