The prisoner swap was all arranged, or so the American negotiators thought. After years of painstaking negotiations with Iran, secretly mediated by Persian Gulf nations, top aides to President Biden had finally struck a deal on June 6 that would free four Americans held in one of Iran’s most notorious prisons. In exchange, the United…
The State Department placed President Biden’s envoy for Iran, Robert Malley, on unpaid leave on Thursday amid a review of his security clearance. “I have been informed that my security clearance is under review,” Mr. Malley said in an email. “I have not been provided any further information, but I expect the investigation to be…
U.S. intelligence officials assessed that reviving the deal was as unpopular among Iranian conservatives and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which runs the military side of the nuclear program, as it was among many American critics of the arrangement. The Iranians had sought, unsuccessfully, a commitment that the United States would never again withdraw from…
WASHINGTON — Many factors are to blame for the dying prospects of reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. But perhaps nothing has hobbled the Biden administration’s efforts more than the legacy of President Donald J. Trump. It was Mr. Trump, of course, who withdrew in 2018 from the nuclear pact brokered with Iran by the…