WASHINGTON (Dispatches) – U.S. President Joe Biden seems increasingly determined to keep the “terrorist” designation on Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), which Tehran is demanding be removed before reviving the 2015 nuclear deal.
“Each side is just hoping that the other would blink first,” Ali Vaez, an Iran expert from the International Crisis Group, a conflict-prevention think tank, told AFP.
Negotiations opened a year ago in Vienna to revive the landmark nuclear agreement.
Under the presidency of Donald Trump, the United States walked out of the agreement in 2018 and reinstated economic sanctions against Tehran.
Despite early hopes, the talks are deadlocked and the emissaries have not been in the Austrian capital since March 11.
However, a draft compromise is still on the table, after resolution of most of the thorniest issues.
The fate of the IRGC is the final obstacle blocking the talks: the Islamic Republic is demanding the removal of the force from the U.S. blacklist of “foreign terrorist organizations.”
Iran rightly says that the IRGC was only added to the list by former president Donald Trump to increase pressure on them after the

U.S. exit from the 2015 agreement, also known by its acronym, the JCPOA.
But the Americans remain non-committal, claiming that the subject is in no way related to the nuclear issue.
“If Iran wants sanctions lifting that goes beyond the JCPOA, they’ll need to address concerns of ours that go beyond the JCPOA,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said this week.
The United States has said it does not negotiate in public and had avoided making any clear statement on the fate of the IRGC’s status.
But Price’s comments appeared to confirm that the Biden administration was hardening its position against removing the designation after a split between its diplomatic fringe, allied with part of the military, and the political wing of the White House, Agence France-Presse reported.
The former had favored some kind of gesture toward the IRGC, while the latter feared criticism from Republicans before the November midterm elections, the news agency said.
Questioned at the beginning of April, Secretary of State Antony Blinken gave a first indication of a toughening stance by saying that “I’m not overly optimistic at the prospects of actually getting an agreement to conclusion”.
Influential Washington Post columnist David Ignatius then reported that Biden was preparing to rule out the IRGC’s removal from the blacklist.
“I don’t think the final decision has been taken yet, but the president is certainly leaning in that direction,” said the Crisis Group’s Vaez.