Manchin Letter Aims to Disrupt Efforts to Restore Iran Nuke Deal

In addition to existing US sanctions on the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), it appears the push to revive the 2015 nuclear deal is facing another obstacle: Senator Joe Manchin.

Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) cast doubts about the possibility of a successful conclusion to ongoing efforts to restore the Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action (JCPOA) in a letter written Tuesday to US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken in which Manchin insists he’ll “do everything in [his] power” to ensure the US doesn’t “repeat the mistakes of the past.”

The US must not be “shortsighted” in using “sanctions relief” to ameliorate its “present energy challenges,” Manchin wrote, before going on to claim US Congress has “an opportunity” to pass “legislation to further expand our ability to deliver the energy our allies and partners need.”

Manchin has long advocated for more deregulation of US energy corporations and, as a recent demonstration of hundreds of activists in West Virginia pointed out, the Democratic senator personally nets around $500,000/year from the operation of his own coal plant.

But Manchin may not be the determining factor in the fate of the JCPOA. In late March, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) said “at the end of the day,” he thinks “the president will get his way” and manage to reach a diplomatic solution to the US impasse with Iran despite continuing attempts by large segments of both chambers of Congress to obstruct a return to the deal.

But on Monday, State Department spokesman Ned Price seemed to call the deal’s eventual revival into question. In an apparent reference to the Iranian request to remove the IRGC from the US blacklist, Price insisted that “if Iran wants sanctions lifting that goes beyond the JCPOA, they’ll need to address concerns of [the US] that go beyond the JCPOA.”

Price went on to label Iran the “world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism,” before vowing the US “will use every appropriate tool” to “confront” what he called “the IRGC’s destabilizing role in the region.”

Iranian officials, meanwhile, blamed the US for delays in negotiations and signaled their own dissatisfaction with the state of talks. "More than one issue is still pending between Iran and the United States," said Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh on Monday." He went on to say that the “messages” being sent by the US “are far from providing solutions that could lead to an accord.”