A senior State Department official told reporters that it is possible to reach a consensus between Iran and the United States for returning to mutual compliance under the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in the upcoming weeks.
Yet, the official annotated by saying that “only time will tell” whether it will become a reality. Speaking to reporters on the condition of anonymity, the senior official left Iran holding the bag. “This is ultimately a matter of a political decision that needs to be made in Iran,” the official said.
He also added “The United States understands what it needs to do to come back into compliance with the sanctions relief commitments that it made under the JCPOA, and we understand what it will take. We also understand what Iran needs to do in order to come back into compliance.”
Although the Iranian officials have frequently denied the existence of it, indirect talks between Washington and Tehran are proceeding in the Austrian capital Vienna.
The next round of talks for reviving the 2015 nuclear deal ongoing in Vienna will continue on Friday.
One of the pledges that Joe Biden has frequently made during his election campaign was the return to the JCPOA that the former president Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from in 2018. Referring to the policies of the Trump era, the official said, “the test of the last three years has shown that is precisely the opposite: that without the JCPOA, that by reimposing all the sanctions and imposing new ones, Iran’s nuclear program is now galloping forward, ant its regional behavior has become more aggressive.”
While the talks are ongoing in Vienna, Iranian authorities announced that they managed to reach 60% in uranium enrichment.
On the other hand, although some reports indicated that the negotiations experienced some progress, Iran’s advanced centrifuges constitute an impediment in taking the talks one step further. It was reported that the United States and European countries attending the talks demanded the destruction of all recently installed IR-4, IR-6, and IR-9 advanced centrifuges.
