Since Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20, the new administration’s top foreign policy and national security figures have said repeatedly that the United States would resume full compliance with the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) if Iran does.

These US officials have added that “we need to work on an agreement that’s longer and stronger than the original one” and “to engage other issues that were not part of the original negotiation,” including Iran’s “destabilizing actions” in the region and its ballistic missile program.

Some in Washington foreign policy circles and elsewhere have been arguing for a new agreement that deals with nuclear, regional, and bilateral US-Iran issues all at once. However, this path is doomed to fail. If Iran wanted to renegotiate the JCPOA framework or add other topics to the agreement, it would have done so while the Donald Trump administration was in office and punishing Iran with maximum pressure sanctions.

The reality is that Iran is not ripe for a “grand bargain.”

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Read the rest of the blog post at the Atlantic Council.