Former U.S. Vice President and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden said on Thursday that if elected, the United States would re-enter the 2015 Iran nuclear deal when the regime “returns to compliance.”
“If Tehran returns to compliance with the deal, I’d rejoin the agreement,” he said in a foreign-policy address in New York. “The historic Iran nuclear deal we negotiated blocked Iran from gaining nuclear weapons, with inspectors on the ground—international inspectors confirming that the agreement was being kept. Yet Trump cast it aside prompting Iran to restart its nuclear program, become more provocative, and raising the risk of another disastrous war in the region.”
He said that he would use “hard-nosed diplomacy” and try to get support from U.S. allies to improve the agreement to “more effectively” combat “against Iran’s destabilizing activities” in the Middle East.
Biden also mentioned the importance of the United States’s “iron-clad commitment to Israel’s security,” regardless of disagreements with Jerusalem.
“It is essential,” he said.
Similarly, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee told Jewish Insider on Thursday that Trump, not Iran, is to blame for the latest destabilization in the Middle East.
“It is clear who breached the agreement; it was Donald Trump. Donald Trump tore up the agreement, not Iran,” he said. “I see no reason why that cannot be reinstituted. Iran has not indicated in any way that they want to breach the agreement; it is Donald Trump who has created this crisis, it was Donald Trump who made a giant misjudgment, and it’s Donald Trump who’s hired the same people in his administration that led to [the Iraq] war.”
Inslee said the nuclear deal had been “containing Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and it was being effective. And the international community was working with us.”
With the United States withdrawing from the agreement in May 2018, the president “opened up the door to the nuclearization of Iran,” he said. “He’s personally responsible for this—not the United States of America.”
Along with Inslee, other candidates who said that, if elected, the United States would re-enter the accord include South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg; Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.); author and spiritual guru Marianne Williamson; Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.); Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.); Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.); former U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro; Mayor of Miramar, Fla., Wayne Messam; Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii); former Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.); Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio); former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas); New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio; and former Rep. John Delaney (D-Md.).
