President Biden, who has vowed to center his foreign policy on the advancement of global human rights, is reviving offers to ease sanctions on the Islamic Republic just as it escalates its assault on women and anti-regime protesters. 

Insisting that diplomacy is the “best option” to halt the Iran’s race to a nuclear bomb, Mr. Biden’s diplomats are floating a renewed idea for an interim agreement with Tehran. First reported by Axios on Monday, the new proposal entails imposing a cap on Iranian uranium enrichment at 60 percent purity in return for easing American sanctions. 

According to the news report, which is yet to be confirmed elsewhere, administration officials briefed European and Israeli counterparts on the plan in February. There are no signs the gambit has advanced since then. Iran has long rejected any interim scheme and insisted instead on full return to the 2015 nuclear deal that President Trump terminated in 2018. 

The original deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, was made by Obama administration officials who now crowd the Biden administration. It capped Iran’s uranium enrichment at 3.67 percent purity, and limited the amount of enriched uranium in its possession to 300 kilograms, or 661 lbs.

The International Atomic Energy Agency recently reported finding traces of uranium enriched to 83.7 percent purity, or near the 90 percent level needed to fuel a nuclear bomb. The finding added to alarms that Iran already amassed 87.5 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent, according to the IAEA’s most recent report. Jerusalem officials have warned American counterparts that Iranian enrichment above the 60 percent level would trigger a military strike, Axios reported. 

While Washington apparently quakes over the possibility of an Israeli military action to interrupt the Iranian nuclear progress, it clings to a phantom diplomacy. Its efforts so far have entailed endless American and European offers for concessions that met hard rejections from Tehran.

Insisting on a full return to the JCPOA makes sense for Tehran: The lifting of restrictions on the Islamic Republic were written into the deal eight years ago. Some restrictions have already expired and others will end soon. At the close of 2030, the JCPOA authorizes the mullahs to manufacture as many nuclear arms as they decide they need.

Now, Tehran feels emboldened to add new conditions to its insistence that only a full return to the original deal will do.

“The window of the talks to return to the JCPOA won’t remain open forever,” Tehran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, told Al Jazeera last week. He pointed to legislation in parliament that would limit the mullahs’ ability to further negotiate on the deal.       

“We will never have diplomacy with the Islamic Republic as long as it is the Islamic Republic,” the policy director for United Against Nuclear Iran, Jason Brodsky, tells the Sun. Washington, he notes, is “offering sanction relief at the same time that Iran helps Russia in the war with Ukraine” and as Iran ramps up its efforts targeting anti-regime protesters.

Contrary to commentators who claim that the authorities have eased enforcement of the hijab laws, top Tehran officials are now calling for further clampdown on women who violate it.  

Women who refuse to cover their hair “should be enlightened through negotiation and persuasion,” the hardline Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi, said over the weekend — insisting however that wearing hijab is a “legal requirement.” 

Those who violate the law mandating head covering in public “will be punished,” the Iranian judiciary chief, Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei, said. At the majlis, a top legislator, Hossein Ali Hajideligani, demanded to see a plan from the administration on how it intends to further enforce the hijab laws. 

These statements seem to indicate that the regime is increasingly frustrated as defiance of the law persists. On Sunday two women, a mother and daughter, were shopping at a dairy store when a man poured yogurt over their uncovered heads. A video of the assault went viral, and commentators said it could reignite the anti-regime movement, which seemed to have ebbed in recent weeks.  

The protest movement — which erupted after a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian, Mahsa Amini, died in custody for improperly donning the mandatory headscarf — never ended completely. Protesters have increasingly called for an end to the regime itself, rather than merely to repeal the hijab law. 

The state department routinely issues trite statements in support of free speech and the right to protest in Iran. At the same time its diplomats are hard at work devising new schemes to appease the regime with promises of sanctions easing.

Instead of seeking a plan B — including added pressure on Tehran and a credible military threat — Mr. Biden insists that diplomacy will best slow the Islamic Republic’s race to the bomb. No wonder the mullahs are emboldened at home and abroad.