Iran backs Biden into a corner

Rejoining the nuclear deal might be easier said than done

Campaigning before an election highlights what presidential candidates say they will do. Governing, by contrast, showcases what they can actually get done. When it comes to Iran policy, President-elect Joe Biden is about to discover the yawning gap between those two realities. Biden called President Donald Trump’s ‘maximum-pressure’ campaign against Iran a “dangerous failure.” Since Trump walked away from the 2015 nuclear deal and imposed ever-tougher sanctions, Iran has 12 times the amount of low-enriched uranium it had when Barack Obama left office. As a result, the ‘breakout time’ for an Iranian nuclear weapon has dwindled from a year to a matter of months. Biden proposes to return to som