Biden Says Force is “Last Resort” to Stop Iran Owning Nuclear

Biden said in an interview with Israel’s Channel 12 News before a four-day visit to Israel and Saudi Arabia that “the only thing worse than the Iran that exists now is Iran with nuclear weapons.”

As per Biden, the use of force would be the last resort to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. In the interview, Biden said he would keep Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on the U.S. Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) list, even if it would kill the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Efforts to resurrect the nuclear deal failed so far, but diplomatic talks are ongoing and a breakthrough is expected.

President Joe Biden said in an interview broadcast Wednesday (July 13) that former President Donald Trump made a “huge mistake” by pulling the United States out of the Iran nuclear deal. Biden also said Iran is now closer to getting a nuclear weapon. Biden further slammed the former administration’s foreign policy, saying “There are those who thought with the last administration we sort of walked away from the Middle East, that we were going to create a vacuum that China and or Russia would fill, and we can’t let that happen.”

Iran reached a deal with six major powers in 2015 to limit its nuclear development. The deal made it more difficult to get weapons in exchange for relief from economic sanctions. In 2018, then-U.S. President Donald Trump reneged on the deal and reimposed tough sanctions on Iran. Trump’s decision led Tehran to begin violating the deal’s nuclear restrictions about a year later. So far, efforts to resume the deal failed. But Iran has participated in intermittent talks in Vienna last April. In addition, indirect talks have been taking place between Tehran and Biden’s administration to reinstate the deal.