Biden's Wendy Sherman appointment tilts balance on Iran deal - analysis

• Published date: 17 January 2021
• Author: YONAH JEREMY BOB

To be sure, Sherman is highly qualified, experienced and knowledgeable about the Islamic Republic.

She will also not be the top decision-maker.

Incoming US secretary of state Anthony Blinken and President-elect Joe Biden are above her, and both of their messages have been more friendly to at least some of Israel's concerns about the US rejoining the deal, such as Tehran's attempts to smuggle precision-guided missiles to Hezbollah and into Syria.

But Sherman was the chief Iran deal negotiator, among its chief explainers and among the top former officials extolling its praises as the Trump administration exited the agreement.

Incoming national security adviser Jake Sullivan, CIA director William Burns, and environmental czar John Kerry were all heavily involved in the 2015 nuclear deal as well.

Kerry, especially, was the public face of the deal - in some ways more than Sherman.

Israelis on a bipartisan basis had been concerned that even if Kerry's portfolio is technically limited to the environment, his seat on the National Security Council would lead to him pushing for rejoining the deal with fewer attempts to fix what Israel and its moderate Sunni Arab allies view as loopholes.

Sullivan got some of the initial steps of the deal done in secret trips before anything became public, and he and Burns had written numerous articles, some of which strongly supported returning to the deal and criticized the Trump administration's "maximum pressure" campaign on Iran.

But Biden's own concerns about the precision-guided missiles threat and his openness to filling some of the loopholes that Israel is concerned about as expressed in a major interview with Thomas Friedman, along with similar messages from Blinken, had suggested that the administration may be undecided as to whether it would quickly rejoin the Iran deal or make some of the demands that Israel and moderate Sunnis have demanded to improve it.

SHERMAN'S APPOINTMENT seems to be a decisive sign that the US will not only move to rejoin the deal, but that the new administration's approach will be that the original deal was mostly adequate.

A benefit of appointing veterans with diplomatic experience to top jobs is that they do not need to waste time learning the ropes...