US Deputy Special Envoy to Iran leaves role

A senior member of the U.S. team negotiating with Iran has left the role due to disagreements about the way forward, as the urgency to salvage the 2015 Iran nuclear deal intensifies.

A State Department official confirmed Monday that Richard Nephew, a U.S. Deputy Special Envoy for Iran, is no longer on the negotiating team, but was still a State Department employee. The official did not give a reason for the change, but said personnel moves were'very common' a year into an administration.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Nephew left after differences of opinion within the U.S. negotiating team on Iran. The paper said he had advocated for a tougher position in the current negotiations.

The United States and its European allies last week said there were just weeks to save the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which was formally called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action JCPOA Indirect talks between Iran and the US resumed almost two months ago. Western diplomats have indicated they were hoping for a breakthrough over the next few weeks, but sharp differences remain. Iran has rejected any deadline imposed by Western powers.

Diplomats and analysts say that the longer Iran stays outside the deal, the more nuclear expertise it gains, shortening the time it might have to race to build a bomb if it chose to, causing the accord's original purpose to be undermined. Tehran denies it has ever tried to develop nuclear weapons.

The State Department official said the withdrawal of the Trump administration from the JCPOA had left the Biden administration with a crisis. The senior-most levels of our Government have given careful consideration to these choices and settled on a policy, because working our way out of this crisis requires many difficult, closely balanced decisions, on which there can be reasonable disagreement.

The US State Department said on Monday that it remains open to meeting with Iranian officials directly to discuss the nuclear deal and other issues after Iran's foreign minister said Tehran would consider it but had made no decisions.

We are prepared to meet directly. The State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters that they had always held the position that it would be more productive to engage with Iran directly on both the JCPOA negotiations and other issues.

Price said the United States had not made Iran's release of four Americans a condition of reaching an agreement on reviving the nuclear deal, and that achieving such an agreement was at best an uncertain proposition. Iranian Americans, whose U.S. citizenship is not recognized by Tehran, are often pawns between the two nations, now at odds over whether or not to revive the 2015 pact under which Iran limited its nuclear program in return for sanctions relief.

Price said that they want to see these Americans return as soon as possible. It would not serve our purposes - it would not serve their purposes - to tie their fates to a proposition that is uncertain at best.