The most dangerous steps Iran has taken in expanding its nuclear program “occurred after President Biden came into office” according to a new timeline outlined by regional experts and reported by The Foreign Desk News outlet.
Benham Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracy (FDD), a Washington D.C.-based think tank focusing on foreign policy, states Iran’s regime has stepped up its policy of incremental nuclear escalation since the election of Joe Biden in 2020.
Iran’s nuclear moves over the past year and a half are “irreversible” in terms of the knowledge they provide the regime with respect to operating more advanced centrifuges, enriching uranium to 60 percent purity, and producing uranium metal using highly enriched uranium. “The regime’s nuclear moves under President Biden render a return to any agreement modeled on the JCPOA as moot,” Taleblu explained.
The Biden administration has been in talks with Iran in order to reenter the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with the Islamic Republic of Iran over its nuclear program. Former President Donald Trump removed the United States from the pact due to Iran’s inability to uphold any aspect of their end of the nuclear deal.
After former Vice President Biden won the November 2020 election against then-President Donald Trump, Iran’s regime began to enrich uranium in advanced IR-2m centrifuges at its primary enrichment facility in Natanz, with its uranium stockpile growing to 2,400 kilograms. As President Biden and his campaign staff began interviewing and vetting potential government officials, Iran’s Islamic Guardian Council approved a new law that called for increasing nuclear advances in December 2020. In January 2021, the Islamic Republic began to enrich uranium to 20 percent purity at its nuclear site in Fordow, creating the necessary capacity for weapons-grade uranium.
Andrea Stricker, a nonproliferation and biodefense program deputy director and research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies states, “The Islamic Republic exploits the Biden administration’s ‘maximum deference’ campaign to undertake its most egregious nuclear advances to date. Biden relaxed sanctions on Tehran, allowing the regime to rebuild its economy and develop alternatives to a deal. Even as Iran approaches the nuclear threshold, the administration has yet to call time on talks and revert to a strategy of maximum economic pressure,”
The Foreign Desk goes on to report what happened after Trump left office and was replaced with Biden:
When Joe Biden and his officials rescinded former President Trump’s snapback of U.N. sanctions, that gave Tehran the green light to stop implementing JCPOA monitoring measures that would allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to observe the regime’s nuclear activities. When faced with protest from the IAEA, Iran threatened to destroy the organization’s data and made 3.6 grams of uranium metal used for nuclear weapon cores. After the Biden administration announced its intent to revive nuclear talks with the Iranian officials, the Islamic government began to enrich its stockpile of uranium to 60 percent weapons-grade level and produce 200 grams of enriched uranium metal.