Follow us on social

Screen-shot-2021-03-31-at-5.34.55-pm

Progressive Dems: Biden needs to move first on Iran nuclear deal

Reps. Murphy and Khanna are frustrated with the pace of JCPOA re-entry, but the White House may be ready to make some moves.

Reporting | Middle East

Two progressive Democratic members of Congress argued on a Wednesday panel that the United States needs to make the first move in returning to the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D–Conn.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D–Calif.) called for a more proactive U.S. stance towards the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action at a video event hosted by the National Iranian American Council and several other pro-diplomacy groups.

“It was a disappointing start when it comes to Iran policy from this administration,” Khanna said. “We have to try to get back into the JCPOA by getting back into the JCPOA, not playing a game of chicken.”

He suggested that State Department Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley has had his hands tied by other factions in the administration.

“I know Rob Malley understands this, I know he is qualified to do this, so I wonder where the roadblocks are,” Khanna added.

Under the original JCPOA, six world powers agreed to lift the international embargo on the Iranian economy in exchange for strict limits on Iran’s nuclear program. The Trump administration broke from the agreement in 2018, and Iran retaliated by increasing some nuclear activities.

The Biden administration has said that it wants to return to the JCPOA, but initially took a hardline stance by demanding that Iran make the first move. There are signs that the U.S. position is becoming more flexible, although Iran has reportedly now hardened its own stance.

“The United States was the first to leave the agreement, and so the United States shouldn’t be wary of taking the first step back into the agreement,” Murphy said. “There is no weakness in the United States admitting that, but for our noncompliance, the JCPOA would still be alive and well today.”

Both Murphy and Khanna noted that the United States could lift economic sanctions immediately, and restore them if Iran failed to reciprocate.

Murphy claimed that the Trump administration’s policy had a “very small silver lining” because it proved that “maximum pressure was a miserable, one hundred percent failure.”

“Trump did exactly what opponents of the JCPOA recommended,” he said. “It’s important to remind the opponents of the agreement that their argument has been tested. Their argument has failed.”

Murphy and Khanna also noted that the United States needs to get Iran to the table in order to resolve the bloody conflict in Yemen.

And Murphy called for a deeper reset in the U.S. relationship with the region that moves away from sectarian views.

“We need to have a broader conversation about whether we really have an interest in who wins these fights between the Sunni and Shi’a side of the region,” he said. “We certainly may have a favorite, but the question is whether we need to weigh in as decisively as we have over the past decade.”


Photos via @RepRoKhanna and shutterstock.com
Reporting | Middle East
Zombie war on terror
Top image credit: Pavel Chagochkin via shutterstock.com

Beware: The Zombie War on Terror is upon us

Global Crises

There is good news and bad news for critics of the United States’ bloated 21st century war machine. The good news: the “war on terror” is dead.

The bad news? It seems to have become a part of the walking dead — a kind of zombie war on terror that is continuing and radically expanding, even as the fears and threats that originally motivated all its excesses are seemingly vanishing from the American psyche.

keep readingShow less
Patriot Act supporting senators are mad when they are the targets
Top photo credit: Sen. Marsha Blackburn (Wikimedia/Gabe Skidmore); Sen. Lindsey Graham (Michael Vadon/wikimedia)

Patriot Act supporting senators are mad when they are the targets

Washington Politics

When it was reported this week that former President Joe Biden’s FBI may have targeted the cellphones of eight Republican senators in the "Arctic Frost” investigation related to the January 6, 2021 Capitol Hill riot, the Republicans that were supposedly surveilled were not happy about it.

One was Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), who posted on X Wednesday, “We need to know why (ATT) and (Verizon) did not challenge the subpoena for the phone records of eight United States senators when the Biden FBI spied on us during an anti-Trump probe.”

keep readingShow less
Marco Rubio
Top image credit: Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks with President Donald Trump during an event in the State Dining Room at the White House Oct. 8, 2025. Photo by Francis Chung/Pool/ABACAPRESS.COM VIA REUTERSCONNECT

Is Rubio finally powerful enough to topple Venezuela's regime?

Latin America

It appears that Secretary of State Marco Rubio is emerging victorious in the internal Trump administration battle over the direction of U.S. policy toward Venezuela.

The New York Times reported on Oct. 6 that White House special envoy Richard Grenell — who, after meeting President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas this January inked deportation agreements, won the release of American prisoners, and secured energy licenses for U.S. and European oil majors — was told by President Donald Trump to stop all diplomatic outreach toward the resource-rich South American nation.

keep readingShow less

LATEST

QIOSK

Newsletter

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.