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2021-08-16t000000z_909725001_mt1nurpho0007gmuzj_rtrmadp_3_health-coronavirus-iran-scaled

Groups call on Biden to ease sanctions on Iran to jumpstart nuke talks

Nearly 50 national and local groups say Iranians are badly in need of humanitarian goods regardless of whether the negotiations continue.

Reporting | Middle East

More than three dozen grassroots advocacy and policy organizations across the country are calling on the Biden administration to alleviate sanctions on Iran for the purchase of vaccines and other humanitarian supplies as a gesture of goodwill, and to potentially jumpstart stalled negotiations for both parties to return to compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. 

In a letter to Biden, the groups — led by the National Iranian American Council and includes J Street, Ploughshares, Truman Center for National Policy, and the Quincy Institute — say that the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the deal has empowered hardliners in Iran, caused the country’s nuclear program to advance beyond the deal’s limits, and led to a stalled diplomatic process that has some hinting at the possibility of moving on to military action.

“There are still diplomatic options available to the United States to change this course and overcome the challenges that Trump's abandonment of the JCPOA have wrought before it is too late,” they write, adding, “your administration can discredit those within Iran who argue there are no differences between your administration and the Trump administration and are eager to match U.S. economic pressure with Iranian nuclear leverage.” 

The groups suggest that the Biden administration identify Iranian financial institutions that can facilitate purchases of COVID-19 vaccines and other needed medical supplies and humanitarian goods as well as supporting efforts to assist the flood of Afghan refugees in Iran. 

The effort comes just after a recent joint statement from President Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson on “the importance of a negotiated solution that provides for the return of Iran and the U.S. to full compliance with the JCPOA and provides the basis for continued diplomatic engagement to resolve remaining points of contention.”

In an apparent response to a recent Responsible Statecraft report, the joint statement highlighted “President Biden’s clearly demonstrated commitment to return the U.S. to full compliance with the JCPOA and to stay in full compliance, so long as Iran does the same.”

In their letter to Biden on Tuesday, the groups say that alleviating some sanctions on humanitarian grounds “will advance U.S. national security by creating momentum for negotiations while also bolstering global vaccination efforts and the campaign to defeat COVID-19” and “demonstrate U.S. seriousness and sincerity in reversing ‘maximum pressure.’”


An Iranian woman wearing a protective face mask receives a dose of the Iranian Coviran Barkat new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine at a drive through vaccination site in the Azadi (Freedom) sports complex during general COVID-19 vaccination in the west of Tehran while the COVID-19 delta variant outbreak in Iran, August 16, 2021. (Photo by Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto)NO USE FRANCE
Reporting | Middle East
US Capitol
Top image credit: Lucky-photographer via shutterstock.com

Why does peace cost a trillion dollars?

Washington Politics

As Congress returns from its summer recess, Washington’s attention is turning towards a possible government shutdown.

While much of the focus will be on a showdown between Senate Democrats and Donald Trump, a subplot is brewing as the House and Senate, led by Republicans but supported by far too many Democrats, fight over how big the Pentagon’s budget should be. The House voted to give Trump his requested trillion dollar budget, while the Senate is demanding $22 billion more.

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Yemen Ahmed al-Rahawi
Top image credit: Funeral in Sana a for senior Houthi officials killed in Israeli strikes Honor guard hold up a portraits of Houthi government s the Prime Minister Ahmed al-Rahawi and other officials killed in Israeli airstrikes on Thursday, during a funeral ceremony at the Shaab Mosque in Sanaa, Yemen, 01 September 2025. IMAGO/ via REUTERS

Israel playing with fire in Yemen

Middle East

“The war has entered a new phase,” declared Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a senior official in Yemen’s Ansar Allah movement, after Israeli jets streaked across the Arabian Peninsula to kill the group’s prime minister and a swathe of his cabinet in Yemen’s capital, Sana’a.

The senior official from Ansar Allah, the movement commonly known as the Houthis, was not wrong. The strike, which Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz promised was “just the beginning,” signaled a fundamental shift in the cartography of a two-year war of attrition between the region’s most technologically advanced military and its most resilient guerrilla force.

The retaliation was swift, if militarily ineffective: missiles launched towards Israel disintegrated over Saudi Arabia. Internally, a paranoid crackdown ensued on perceived spies. Houthi security forces stormed the offices of the World Food Programme and UNICEF, detaining at least 11 U.N. personnel in a sweep immediately condemned by the U.N. Secretary General.

The catalyst for this confrontation was the war in Gaza, unleashed by Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Israel, which provided the Houthis with the ideological fuel and political opportunity to transform themselves. Seizing the mantle of Palestinian solidarity — a cause their leader, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, frames as a “sacrifice in the cause of God Almighty ” — they graduated from a menacing regional actor into a global disruptor, launching missiles toward Israel just weeks after Hamas’s attacks and holding one of the world’s most vital shipping lanes hostage.

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Top photo credit: President Trump (shutterstock/Maxim Elramsisy) and Georgian president Mikheil Kavelashvili ( President of Azerbaijan)

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Europe

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President Mikheil Kavelashvili’s letter to Trump urges a restoration of strategic ties with Washington. It struck the tone of a forsaken friend, talking about the lack of U.S. focus, raising “doubts and questions among the Georgian people about how free and sincere your administration’s actions are in terms of strengthening peace in the region.” He even bemoans Trump’s reinstatement of relations with President Putin.

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