Blinken Says US In 'Lock Step' With Allies On Iran Nuclear Isuue

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Sunday that the United States was "absolutely in lock step" with European allies on getting Iran back into the 2015 nuclear deal.

But the top US diplomat added it was unclear if Tehran was willing to rejoin the talks in a "meaningful way."

Iran stopped participation in multilateral talks in Vienna in June, refusing to announce an exact date for their its return.

Blinken's remarks in an interview with CNN on Sunday come a day after the United States, Germany, France and Britain urged Iran to resume compliance with a 2015 nuclear deal in order to "avoid a dangerous escalation."

The accord, under which Iran curtailed nuclear work seen as a risk of developing nuclear weapons in exchange for a lifting of global sanctions, unraveled in 2018 after then-President Donald Trump withdrew the United States, prompting Tehran to breach limits on uranium enrichment set by the pact.

"It really depends on whether Iran is serious about doing that," Blinken said about Iran rejoining the nuclear talks. "All of our countries, working by the way with Russia and China, believe strongly that that would be the best path forward", he added.

Leaders of the four countries hoping to persuade Tehran to stop enriching uranium to near-weapons-grade levels, said on Saturday they wanted a negotiated solution. Iran is enriching uranium to 20 and 60 percent purity, which has no civilian use. The process reduces the time Tehran would need to develop a nuclear device.

"But we do not yet know whether Iran is willing to come back to engage in a meaningful way," Blinken said on Sunday. "But if it isn't, if it won't, then we are looking together at all of the options necessary to deal with this problem."

Iran's foreign minister said separately on Sunday that if the United States was serious about rejoining Tehran's 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, President Joe Biden could just issue an "executive order," the state-owned Iran newspaper reported.

"It is enough for Biden to issue an executive order tomorrow and they (U.S.) announce they are rejoining the pact from the point where his predecessor left the deal," Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said. "If there is a serious will in Washington to return to the deal, there is no need for all these negotiations at all."

But this fails to take into consideration the different current circumstances including the complexity of the sanctions and the reversal of gains Iran has made in its nuclear program since 2018.

Talks between Iran and world powers aimed at salvaging the deal, which started in April, are slated to resume at the end of November, the Islamic Republic's top nuclear negotiator said on Wednesday.

With reporting by Reuters

Iran Says Biden Must First Show 'Goodwill' Begore Reviving Nuclear Deal

Oct 31, 2021, 15:58 GMT

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Maryam Sinaiee

Iran's foreign minister insists that to revive the 2015 nuclear deal, the US must first show "good will" and turn the clock back to 2018 when it left the deal.

In an exclusive interview published Sunday by the government mouthpiece, Iran newspaper, the top Iranian diplomat said Tehran expects the US to return to the time before Trump sanctions began, if the President Joe Biden seriously wishes to revive the agreement that his predecessor abandoned. Iran will also return to the same point in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), he said.

Amir-Abdollahian insisted that there is no need for so much negotiation and a "simpler solution" to revive the JCPOA would be if Biden issues an executive order and return to where things were in May 2018.

"We hear [about the US] will and intention [to do so] in their messages but we don't see it in their actions," he said while reiterating that the US should release $10 billion of Iran's frozen funds to prove its "good will", because Iran is very distrustful of their intentions.

A return to 2018 for Iran would mean the lifting of "all Trump sanctions" many of which are not directly or even indirectly related to Iran's nuclear activities. Iran will in return set its nuclear program to the same pace and form as it was in 2018, Iranian officials say. But this fails to take into consideration the different current circumstances including the complexity of the sanctions and the reversal of gains Iran has made in its nuclear program since 2018.

The JCPOA put a 3.65-percent enrichment cap on Iran but since the US withdrawal from the pact, Iran has installed advanced, more powerful centrifuges such allowing it to reach faster and much higher levels of enrichment and has stockpiled 20-percent and 60-percent enriched fissile material that has no civilian use. Iran may retire its advanced centrifuges and give up its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, but it gets to keep the know-how and experience gained in the process.

Arguing that Iran has gained nothing from the JCPOA, including the lifting of UN sanctions in the years following its conclusion, the top Iranian diplomat alleged that former US president Barack Obama was the first one to violate the nuclear deal and that more violations followed by Trump who withdrew from the agreement. He did not specify what had Obama violated.

Iran could say that six UN resolutions against the country had been lifted with a settlement that six other parties to the JCPOA also agreed on and that the issue of sanctions was solved, "if it had benefitted from the agreement", he said, adding: "There is now a thick document in several hundred pages called the JCPOA which has made things even harder for Iran than the six UN resolutions [that it lifted]," he said.

Iran has also insisted that the US gives assurances not to leave the deal if Tehran abides by its commitments. According to a joint statement issued Saturday by Germany, France and the UK Sunday after a meeting on the margins of the G20 in Rome attended by Biden, Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron and Boris Johnson, the US president has agreed to return to JCPOA and stay in the deal. “We welcome President Biden’s clearly demonstrated commitment to return the US to full compliance with the JCPOA [joint comprehensive plan of action] and to stay in full compliance, so long as Iran does the same,” the statement said.

But this is a verbal agreement not a ratified treaty and Iran might not satisfied that a future US government would not once again withdraw from the agreement. Once issue with JCPOA, experts have said, is the fact that Obama avoided presenting it for ratification, which made it easier for Trump to abandon the deal.

In his interview with Iran newspaper, Amir-Abdollahian also rejected “excessive demands” by the US and some European countries to include regional issues in negotiations with Iran. "We have no plans to hold talks with them on regional issues,” he said, insisting that talks will be limited to the nuclear issue and the JCPOA.