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Global Leaders Press For Nuclear Deal Amid Election Of Iran President Under Sanction By US For Human Rights Violations

(Photo credit should read JOE KLAMAR/AFP via Getty Images)

Ashley Carnahan Contributor
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Global leaders have continued to move forward, seeking a nuclear deal with Iran even as the newly-elected Iranian president is under sanction by the U.S. for human rights violations, The Associated Press (AP) reported.

Closed-door nuclear talks are currently taking place at the “Grand Hotel Vienna” in Austria between Iran and global powers to try to restore the 2015 nuclear deal. The Trump administration pulled out of the nuclear deal in 2018, saying it was “defective at its core,” according to Fox News.

Enrique Mora, the EU official who chaired the final meeting of talks between Russia, China, Germany, France, Britain and Iran, said, “we are closer to a deal, but we are not still there,” according to AP.

“We have made progress on a number of technical issues,” Mora added. “We have now more clarity on technical documents — all of them quite complex — and that clarity allows us to have also a great idea of what the political problems are.”

In recent days, the talks have continued as Iran’s newly-elected president Raisol-Sadati, known as “Ebrahim Raisi,” is under sanction by the U.S. for human rights violations.

The Trump administration imposed sanctions on Iran in 2019 via Executive Order 13876 and described how Raisi was involved in the regime’s brutal crackdown on Iran’s Green Movement protests. (RELATED: Hardline Muslim Cleric Allegedly Behind Mass Executions To Be Iran’s Next President)

The Executive Order also noted that Raisi participated in a “death commission that ordered the extrajudicial executions of thousands of political prisoners in 1988.” The commission reportedly sent 5,000 imprisoned government opponents to their deaths, according to Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and other organizations.

Raisi was also accused of failing to investigate the fatal shootings of hundreds of peaceful, unarmed demonstrators during a 2019 nationwide protest over a rise in gas prices. The former judiciary chief was in command as nearly 7,000 protesters were arrested, tortured, and sentenced to harsh prison terms, according to The New York Times.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Sunday that Raisi’s election was “the last chance for the world powers to wake up before returning to the nuclear agreement and to understand who they’re doing business with.”

“These guys are murderers, mass murderers: a regime of brutal hangmen must never be allowed to have weapons of mass destruction that will enable it to not kill thousands, but millions,” Bennett said, according to the AP.

The U.S. does not have a representative at the Vienna talks, but President Joe Biden has expressed interest in re-joining the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.