A senior U.S. official told reporters on Saturday that Iran has walked back all the concessions it made in previous negotiations on reviving the 2015 nuclear deal, but is insisting on pocketing compromises from other governments while issuing fresh demands.
Iran's aggressive stance at the talks this week in Vienna with world powers, coupled with a provocative acceleration of its nuclear program, raised questions about whether the nuclear agreement can still survive, the senior State Department official said.
European partners at the talks and representatives from Russia and China were quite upset with Iran's negotiating position, which seemed to reject the results of six rounds of talks earlier this year, the official said.
Iran opted to abandon any of the compromises that Iran had floated during the six rounds of talks, pocket all of the compromises that other countries and the US had made, and then ask for more, the official said.
European diplomats on Friday offered similarly pessimistic assessments of the talks suspended Friday, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Tehran did not appear serious about doing what was needed to return to the terms of the nuclear deal.
According to Iran s Mehr News Agency, Iranian chief negotiator Ali Bagheri said on Friday that his government's proposals were on the table and that Tehran was waiting for documented and logical responses.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian told the European Union foreign policy chief Josef Borrell that Tehran had engaged with good intentions in line with achieving a good agreement.
European diplomats suggested that the talks could resume next week after the parties agreed to pause the talks on Friday. The timing of the next round of discussions is less important than whether Iran will come back with a serious attitude prepared to negotiate seriously, according to a senior State Department official who was not authorized to speak on the record. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States planned to consult with allies on how to proceed, but he said time was running out on reviving the deal. We will see if Iran has any interest in engaging seriously, but the window is very tight, Blinken said.
The White House would conclude that the talks were pointless and that the nuclear deal was dead, according to a senior State Department official.
The administration was not standing still and we re-energised for a world in which there is no return to the JCPOA, the official said, while adding that it is not our preference. The official suggested that the Biden administration could take punitive measures against Iran over its nuclear activities before giving up completely on the Vienna negotiations.
We don't need to take measures to make clear to Iran that there is a price to pay if it continues to stonewall, because we're sitting in Vienna. The official said that even as we speak today, it is not as if Iran is moving and we are sitting back and waiting.
The US is indirectly involved in the Vienna talks on the insistence of the Iranians, with U.S. officials relaying messages to the Iranian delegation through European diplomats.
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, was signed by Iran, Britain, France, Germany, China, Russia and the United States in 2015. The agreement imposed strict limits on Tehran's nuclear program designed to prevent the regime from building nuclear weapons. World powers have loosened sanctions on Iran.
In 2018, President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the deal, imposed sanctions and introduced new economic penalties on Iran as part of a maximum pressure campaign. Iran has responded by banning its uranium enrichment and other nuclear activities, while limiting access to U.N. inspectors.
President Joe Biden offered to return the United States to the accord if Iran doesn't abide by the provisions of the agreement. The talks on reviving the deal made some progress until June, when a hardline cleric, Ebrahim Raisi, was elected president in Iran. The talks were held up for five months, with Iran s new government saying it needed time to review the issue and prepare its negotiating stance.
The US nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Iran has used the past five months to advance its nuclear program, putting the whole deal at risk, citing reports by the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.
If they don't accelerate their nuclear program as they seem to have done late, then there'll be less time left for the JCPOA to be resurrected, the U.S. official said.
On Wednesday, the IAEA said Iran had started producing enriched uranium with more advanced centrifuges at an underground plant in Fordow. Iran is not allowed to enrich uranium at Fordow in the year 2015, according to the deal.
Iran played down the IAEA report as routine.
Arms control experts say Iran is about two weeks from now from having enough fissile material to build a nuclear weapon. The breakout time was estimated at a year when Iran was able to comply with the 2015 nuclear deal.