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Media coverage | 22 February 2021

ELN Policy Fellow Sahil Shah’s Politico article featured in Fareed Zakharia newsletter

Iran Middle East Nuclear Security Nuclear Weapons Global Security Iran

ELN Policy Fellow Sahil Shah, along with Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, founder and CEO of the Bourse & Bazaar Foundation, recently authored a Politico article titled “Three Solutions to Biden’s Nuclear Stalemate with Iran” . It was featured in “Fareed’s Global Briefing” newsletter, which can be found here.

The Biden team has declared that Iran must return to full compliance with the nuclear deal before American sanctions are eased—but as Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told Fareed this month, Tehran insists the US must take the first, sanctions-lifting step. As Fareed argued last week, there are ways to work this out, and at Politico Magazine, Esfandyar Batmanghelidj and Sahil Shah concur that the sequencing is far from impossible. The Biden team could restore Trump-canceled waivers that allow Iran to sell some oil while US sanctions remain in place, they write. Alternatively, it could support an Iranian loan request from the IMF, or ease Iran’s access to its foreign financial holdings.

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