Iranian President-Elect Raisi Refuses To Meet With Biden

Iranian President-elect Ebrahim Raisi said Monday that he won’t meet with President Joe Biden and that Iran’s missile program is “non-negotiable.”

Officials within the Biden administration had said that Raisi's recent election victory would not affect their plans to rejoin the 2015 nuclear agreement that was negotiated by the Obama administration.

However, the road to a new deal is becoming increasingly difficult.

Raisi has insisted that Biden drop the sanctions imposed on the Iranian government by the Trump administration after the U.S. violated the deal by withdrawing from it in 2018. He also promised to salvage the accord to get relief from the sanctions, which he says devastated the Iranian economy.

Raisi also has no plans to limit the country's nuclear capabilities after their uranium became enriched to 60%, its highest level.

Raisi's election puts hard-liners like himself into top posts of the Iranian government as the negotiations to try and save one of the Obama Administration's landmark deals becomes a priority for Biden, a task that will likely be difficult.

"I don't envy the Biden team," Karim Sadjapour, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told the Associated Press. "I think his administration has a heightened sense of urgency to revise the deal before Raisi and a new hardliners team is inaugurated."

The Biden administration has made the return to the deal a top priority, and his state department insists that prospects for reaching a new agreement shouldn't change and that Ayatollah Khamenei, should make the decision since he was the one who previously signed the 2015 agreement. Raisi is a protege of the Ayatollah Khamenei.

Despite Raisi's stance, Iran's lead negotiator Abbas Aqaqui still said that “good progress” has been made and both sides were “closer to a deal than ever" after a recent meeting.

Photo: AFP / ATTA KENARE