https://www.wsj.com/articles/rogues-are-on-the-march-russia-kremlin-ukraine-putin-iran-nuclear-putin-xi-china-biden-11638724476?mod=hp_opin_pos_3#cxrecs_s
If you think President Biden has trouble at home, take a look at what’s happening around the world. Iran, Russia and China are all seeking to establish new regional hegemony, and they’re often working together to do it. Their leaders don’t appear to believe Mr. Biden can or will do anything to stop them.
Iran revealed its disdain for U.S. entreaties last week as nuclear talks resumed in Vienna. The U.S. opened the proceedings with a sanctions waiver to let Iran sell electricity to Iraq. The result? A senior U.S. official conceded Saturday, after the latest round of talks finished, that Iran had shown no willingness to slow its uranium enrichment and even walked back its agreements from previous rounds.
U.S. and European officials briefed the press about Iran’s intransigence but seemed at a loss about how to respond. The Iranians are “continuing to accelerate their nuclear program in particularly provocative ways,” a U.S. official told the press on background, and their “latest provocation” was preparing “for the doubling of their production capacity of 20% enriched uranium” at its secret Fordow facility.
Sounds serious. So what is the U.S. prepared to do? It will beg Iran some more to return to the table with a better attitude.
“The world is prepared to support a mutual return to compliance by both sides. The world is prepared even to engage economically with Iran and diplomatically with Iran. But for that, Iran has to show seriousness at the table and be prepared to come back in short order in compliance with the deal,” the U.S. official said. Pleading with Iran to do what it has already refused to do will reinforce the view in Tehran that it will pay no price if it keeps enriching uranium until it gets to the brink of having a bomb.