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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/24/us/politics/iran-protests-ukraine-nuclear-enrichment.html
U.S. Enters a New Era of Direct Confrontation with Iran
(New York Times) David E. Sanger - A new era of direct confrontation with Iran has burst into the open. President Biden's hope of re-entering the U.S. into the deal with Iran that was struck in 2015 has all but died. At the White House, national security meetings on Iran are devoted less to negotiation strategy and more to how to undermine Iran's nuclear plans, provide communications gear to protesters and interrupt the country's supply chain of weapons to Russia, according to several administration officials. Robert Malley, the State Department's special envoy for the Iran negotiations, has usually been more optimistic about the chances of a diplomatic solution, but said on Tuesday, "Iran turned their back on a nuclear deal that was within grasp." "Imagine telling the incoming administration in January 2021 that within two years, Iran would be enriching to near weapons-grade uranium at Fordow, deploying its most advanced centrifuges in large numbers, accepting severely limited international monitoring, accumulating multiple bombs' worth of highly enriched uranium and rejecting diplomatic efforts," said Henry Rome, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "That's not quite a worst-case scenario, but it's pretty close....The administration must now contend with the fact that, in essentially all fields, the Iranian threat to international peace and security is greater today than it was two years ago."