US and Iran Rely on Shadow Diplomacy Where Open Deals Would Fail
- A planned prisoner exchange could lead to nuclear progress
- Politics are too toxic for formal return to 2015 nuclear deal
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The US and Iran are engaged in broad but largely unacknowledged efforts to reach agreements on everything from prisoner exchanges to oil revenue to nuclear capabilities — while avoiding deals that could be swatted down by opponents on either side.
Recent weeks have seen Iran and the US come to an understanding on a possible prisoner exchange and the transfer of $6 billion in Iranian oil revenue stuck in South Korea, developments the Biden administration insists aren’t linked. At the same time, Iran is now selling more oil to China than it has in a decade, and there’s talk of limiting its uranium enrichment, a key priority for the US.