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Biden is running out of time to dodge Trump's traps with Iran

Despite calling for a return to the Iran nuclear deal, President Joe Biden has yet to do so while in office.

The window of opportunity to revive the deal is closing, and Biden needs to act quickly and boldly to clear the political traps set by Trump.

Emma Belcher is president of Ploughshares Fund.

See more stories on Insider's business page.

The future of the Iran nuclear deal hangs in the balance, and with it the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran or another Middle East war to stop it.

The next few weeks will be decisive. To save the deal and renew America's engagement in the world, President Joe Biden will need to act quickly and boldly to clear away the political traps set by President Donald Trump.

While campaigning for president, Biden said the best way to avoid an onrush of war in the Middle East would be for "the president to rejoin the Iran deal and build on it." Yet, the administration was slow off the mark in its efforts to re-enter the Iran nuclear deal that Biden helped create, and the window of opportunity before the June Iranian elections is closing.

The current talks in Vienna are a welcome development and a sign that both sides realize that the stakes are high and time is short. But the drums of war are still beating.

Just this weekend, Israel reportedly attacked a key nuclear facility in Iran, presumably to set back the negotiations as well as Tehran's nuclear program. This is a reminder of how fragile this diplomatic process is, and how important it is to bring the talks to a successful end before other hostile acts can trip them up.

Iran was in compliance with the agreement negotiated by the Obama-Biden administration when Trump withdrew in 2018. Trump reimposed crushing economic sanctions as part of a "maximum pressure" campaign to force Tehran back to the table to get a "better" deal.

Trump's plan was a "maximum failure" that produced a predictable reply: Tehran soon began to restart its nuclear program, including enriching uranium beyond the deal's limits. Since Trump withdrew, the estimated time it would take for Iran to produce enough nuclear material for one bomb dropped from 12 months to only a few.

As the LA Times put it, "Without a deal restricting the Iranian nuclear program, the choice becomes to watch Iran march closer to the ability to build a bomb, or to go to war to stop it." In Biden's own words, Trump "recklessly tossed away a policy that was working to keep America safe and replaced it with one that has worsened the threat."

Beyond merely reinstating the economic sanctions from the Iran deal, the Trump administration built a malicious "sanctions wall," including redundant terrorism sanctions for the sole purpose of making it as hard as possible for the Biden team to get back into the nuclear agreement. To lift the sanctions as required under the nuclear deal, Biden will have to lift some so-called "terrorism" sanctions as well.

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Not shy about their disingenuous sanctions ploy, Trump officials said that listing existing nuclear sanctions again under terrorism "makes it more difficult to reverse the action," while Trump ally Mark Dubowitz urged Trump to implement sanctions that his successor "could not easily dismantle."

The Biden team seems to understand that Trump's sanctions wall must come down.

State Department Spokesman Ned Price told journalists April 7 that "We are prepared to take the steps necessary to return to compliance with the JCPOA, including by lifting sanctions that are inconsistent with the JCPOA."

Even so, the Biden administration is understandably reluctant to take on this fight at the same time that it is doing so much else. Biden cannot afford to lose any Democratic support for his agenda, particularly in the 50-50 Senate.

Yet, as Biden's interim guidance on how America will engage in the world states, "[r]eal strength isn't bluster or bullying. It means leading with our values."

And lifting malicious sanctions that not only undermine the Iran deal but hurt those most vulnerable is most certainly in line with American values. Sanctions have hamstrung civil society's ability to fight for human rights and democracy, wreaked havoc on the livelihood of ordinary Iranians, caused food insecurity and limited access to medicines and medical equipment.

Worse, these sanctions have exacerbated the horrible COVID-19 pandemic, making it difficult for a pandemic-stricken population to fight the virus.

In its relations with Iran, the United States must be guided by empathy and shared humanity, as well as by protecting our national security interests. By dismantling the sanctions and returning to the nuclear deal, we'll have the basis to address Iran's problematic behavior in the region more broadly, while helping Iranian civilians survive this disastrous pandemic.

President Joe Biden must turn his fine words about American strength and values into practice. He must be as bold on Iran as he has been on domestic policy, where he has proposed aggressive measures on the pandemic, infrastructure, and energy.

This means expending political capital to lift the disingenuous Trump sanctions so that all parties can return to compliance. And he needs to act now, before the diplomatic path closes and a nuclear Iran and/or another costly war in the Middle East become more likely, threatening Biden's entire agenda. It's time for a principled approach to Iran that truly keeps Americans safe.

Read the original article on Business Insider

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Former Minnesota police officer charged in Wright death appears in court

Former Minnesota police officer charged in Wright death appears in court

Kim Potter poses for a booking photograph at Hennepin County Jail

MINNEAPOLIS (Reuters) -The former Minnesota police officer charged with manslaughter in the fatal shooting of a young Black man during a traffic stop made her first court appearance on Thursday as the slain motorist's family called for "full accountability" for his death.

Kimberly Potter, 48, who turned in her badge on Tuesday and posted $100,000 bond hours after her arrest on Wednesday, appeared for the online video hearing seated with her lawyer in his office. The proceeding lasted just a few minutes.

Potter, wearing a plaid shirt, was not asked any questions about the case or her intended plea, and spoke only to say: "Yes, I am," when asked to affirm her attendance for the record.

She waived her right to a formal reading of the criminal complaint charging her with second-degree manslaughter over the fatal shooting of 20-year-old Daunte Wright on Sunday in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Center.

Police pulled over Wright for what they said was an expired vehicle registration tag that led officers to find an outstanding warrant for his arrest on a misdemeanor firearms offense.

The city's police chief said the next day that it appeared from video of the incident that Potter, assigned as her young partner's training officer, had mistaken her gun for a Taser when she shot Wright.

During Wednesday's hearing, Hennepin County Judge Paul Scoggin set the next court date for May 17 and ordered the 26-year veteran officer, who is white, to refrain from using firearms for the duration of her case.

Before the hearing, members of the Wright family and their lawyers gathered at the church in Minneapolis where his funeral will be held next Thursday to remember the father of a 2-year-old son and press for an aggressive prosecution of Potter.

"The last few days, everybody has asked me what do we want to see happen," Wright's mother, Katie Wright, said. "I do want accountability, 100% accountability. … But even when that happens, if that happens, we're still going to bury our son."

ANGER IN THE STREETS

The shooting of Wright sparked nightly demonstrations and civil unrest in Brooklyn Center, just miles from the courthouse where a white former Minneapolis policeman is standing trial on murder murder charges over kneeling on the neck of George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man arrested on suspicion of passing a bogus $20 bill last May.

About 400 demonstrators rallied outside the Brooklyn Center police headquarters again on Thursday evening, many of them lighting candles at dusk.

Some individuals in the crowd shouted taunts at sheriff's deputies or National Guard troops posted on the opposite side of a double barricade of concrete and chain-link fencing in front of the building. Protesters also tossed water bottles and other objects over the barricades periodically.

Law enforcement, visible in fewer numbers than previous nights, held their ground and largely refrained from engaging with the crowd, as darkness fell and a 10 p.m. curfew neared. The crowd was also smaller than earlier in the week.

Tensions on the street have eased since Potter's arrest on Wednesday.

In trying to win a second-degree manslaughter verdict, prosecutors must show that Potter was culpably negligent and took an "unreasonable risk" in shooting Wright.

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VIDEO EVIDENCE

Police video of the incident shows Potter threatening to stun Wright with her Taser before firing her handgun. Former Police Chief Tim Gannon, who also resigned on Tuesday, said she mistakenly used her service weapon instead of her Taser.

In the video, Potter can be heard shouting: "Taser, Taser, Taser!" as she draws her gun and opens fire on Wright in his car after he had just broken away from a fellow officer trying to handcuff him.

Potter is then heard saying: "Holy shit, I just shot him."

The medical examiner determined Wright died of a single gunshot wound to the chest, ruling the case a homicide.

If convicted, Potter faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a $20,000 fine. Her lawyer, Earl Gray, did not respond to a request for comment before the hearing.

Benjamin Crump, a lawyer for the Wright family, said the shooting reflected a broader problem of law enforcement in the United States using excessive force and having a propensity to "overpolice marginalized minorities, especially Black men."

But Crump said the move to charge Potter also represented some progress following the lack of prosecutions of officers involved in the deaths of Black men such as Eric Garner and Michael Brown in recent years.

"All this family is striving for is to get full accountability, get equal justice. Nothing more and nothing less," Crump told the briefing at the New Salem Missionary Baptist Church.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in Minneapolis and Maria Caspani in New York; Additional reporting by Julio-Cesar Chavez and Leah Millis in Brooklyn Center, Minn. Writing and additional reporting by Nathan Layne in Wilton, Ct., and Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Daniel Wallis, Peter Cooney and Gerry Doyle)

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MSM getting a headache while getting striped naked?