Experts say that even both Iran and the US appear attracted in reviving the nuclear deal, deep distrust and decades-long animosity mean both sides are unlikely to return to normal their relationship in the near future. Nevertheless, a new round of negotiations begins in Vienna to salvage the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
In 2018, then US President Donald Trump pulled Washington out of the deal and reinstituted US sanctions on Tehran. A year later, Iran started to violate many of the deal's provisions and claimed that its nuclear program is peaceful, demanding that the US lift all the sanctions it imposed after 2018. They say they want to save the nuclear pact for economic reasons and reject normalizing ties with the West, particularly with the US, which hard-liners maintain pursues the goal of regime change in Tehran. Iran's secret nuclear program was one of the major reasons for the country being placed by US in the so-called "axis of evil".
After the moderate Hassan Rouhani was elected as Iran's president in 2013, Obama offered Tehran a chance for a fresh start and a way out of international isolation. The efforts helped the world powers to strike the JCPOA deal with Iran toward the end of Obama's second term, but Obama lacked sufficient political capital to permanently alter the US strategy toward Iran.
His successor, Donald Trump, then unilaterally pulled out of the deal, despite attempts by the international community to prevent the US withdrawal. Efforts by the other signatories to the agreement, like the European Union, to salvage the deal with guaranteed economic benefits for Iran, also failed.
The threat of US sanctions has prevented foreign firms from doing business with Iranian entities, hindering the nation's integration into the world economy.
Still, the US currently has few options left to stop Iran's nuclear program, barring perhaps the use of military force, which risks triggering a new war in the Middle East. President Biden seems to have a serious interest in resolving the nuclear issue with Iran through diplomacy and is not seeking another military conflict in the Middle East. But unlike the Obama administration, the Biden administration does not seem to have a long-term strategy of diplomacy with Iran.
At the moment, both countries do not seem to want to achieve more than a return to the JCPOA and that will be the ceiling of their engagement because the decades-long animosity and mistrust between Tehran and Washington runs deep and is supported by powerful political forces in both countries.