Gaps remain between the US and Iran in the talks on a return to the 2015 nuclear deal, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Tuesday.
“We’ve said this many times: We have taken a deliberate and principled approach to these negotiations from the start. If Iran is prepared to comply with comments — with its commitments under 2015 deal, then we are prepared to do the same,” she said.
“The administration, along with our allies, is preparing equally for scenarios with or — and without a mutual return to the — to the full implementation of the JCPOA,” said Jean-Pierre, using the acronym for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which is the official name of the Iran nuclear deal.
“The President will only conclude a deal that he determines in the national security interest of the United States. Again, not going to negotiate, not going to have conversations or hypotheticals of what may or may not happen. We have been very clear about what we intend here, and it’s to make sure that Iran does not acquire a nuclear weapon. And that is our ultimate goal here,” she stressed.
Pressed on the timeline that President Joe Biden is looking at for an agreement, Jean-Pierre replied, “Look, it’s a regular back-and-forth. As we have said, we are studying the response in coordination with our E3 allies. As you know, we have received a response. Again, we’re not going to negotiate in public. Some gaps have closed in recent weeks but others have remained.”
The comments come as efforts continue to reach an agreement on a return to the 2015 nuclear deal, from which then-US President Donald Trump withdrew in 2018.
Iran last week announced it had submitted its comments to the US response to the European Union’s draft for reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
While Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson said at the time that Iran’s response was prepared based on a constructive approach, a senior Biden administration official told Politico, “We are studying Iran’s response, but the bottom line is that it is not at all encouraging.”
Last Friday, a senior European official directly involved in nuclear talks with Iran told Axios’ Barak Ravid that Iran’s latest response to the EU’s proposal is unreasonable and indicates that the Iranians are not interested in closing a deal.
"The Iranian response was totally unreasonable. It reopens the EU coordinator’s text on nuclear safeguards, which was at the outer limits of our flexibility already - and which the Iranians implicitly accepted in their August 15 response," the official said.
The European official stressed to Ravid, "The Iranian response can only be read as they do not want to close this deal - when we were so close, for the first time in 18 months."
On Monday, the Iranian spokesperson once again insisted that Iran's response to the US viewpoints on the European Union's proposed final draft of a potential nuclear agreement was "constructive, clear and legal".
Iran has scaled back its compliance with the 2015 deal ever since Trump’s withdrawal and has continued to do so even during the talks with the US.
Last week, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said that Iran has begun enriching uranium with the second of three cascades, or clusters, of advanced IR-6 centrifuges recently installed at its underground plant at Natanz.
The report, released on Wednesday, followed a report released by the IAEA two days earlier which indicated that the first cascade had been brought onstream.