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Former Secretary of State Antony Blinken acknowledged that the Biden administration's political calculus, including the 2022 midterm elections, complicated its push for a tougher nuclear agreement with Iran, lamenting that "sometimes politics gets in the way."
Blinken admitted President Joe Biden gave into the pull of midterm politics.
"You have midterm elections: It shouldn't be, but it is too often a factor," Blinken told The New York Times' David Sanger at a Harvard forum Tuesday.
As President Donald Trump and Israel have pounded Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile aspirations, including decapitation strikes on multiple iterations of leadership, Blinken now "regrets" his administration never secured what officials had described as a "longer and stronger" follow-on deal to the original Iran nuclear agreement.
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"I wish we had gotten there," Blinken said. "We worked very hard on getting that longer and stronger agreement. And I think at various points, we were really leaning into it.
"The Iranians were leaning back at other points. They were leaning in, and we had our own constraints. You know, I'll acknowledge, too, that sometimes politics gets in the way.
When pressed on whether that meant Biden did not want to move forward before the elections, Blinken said the administration was trying to find the "right time" to complete an agreement. But he added that, even accounting for the political considerations, Iran "wasn't conceding enough to make that deal worthwhile."
"So what did we do?" Blinken said. "We actually kept the pressure on them."
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That admission is likely to fuel criticism from Republicans who argued the Biden administration's Iran strategy was shaped as much by domestic political concerns as by national security calculations.
Trump says his administration, led by peace envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, is now pursuing new diplomatic off ramps for peace with Iran, but he added is he achieving his long-stated goal that "Iran will never have a nuclear weapon."
"They can't have certain things," Trump said Monday from the Oval Office. "It starts with no nuclear weapons, and they've agreed to that.
"They're not going to have enrichment - any of those things," he added.
"We are in about the best bargaining position," Trump said. "We're way ahead of schedule."
