Ned Price
Ned PriceREUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/POOL/File Photo

US State Department spokesperson Ned Price reiterated on Tuesday that a return to the 2015 Iran deal is not on the agenda at the moment.

“We’ve made the point for several months now that the JCPOA is not on the agenda. It hasn’t been on the agenda for some time. Of course, there have been instances where we thought we are on the precipice of a mutual return to compliance with the JCPOA, only to find the Iranians turning their backs on a deal that was on the table, a deal that had otherwise been approved by all,” Price told reporters at a press briefing.

“So it hasn’t been on the agenda for us for months. It hasn’t been our focus. Since September, certainly our focus has been on standing up for the fundamental freedoms of the Iranian people and countering Iran’s deepening military partnership with Russia and its support for Russia as Moscow wages its brutal invasion of Ukraine,” added Price.

Earlier, White House national security spokesman John Kirby said that Washington still wants to restore the 2015 nuclear deal, but doing so is not a priority at the moment.

"There is no progress happening with respect to the Iran deal now. We don't anticipate any progress anytime in the near future," Kirby said.

"We simply don't see a deal coming together anytime soon, while Iran continues to kill its own citizens and is selling UAVs to Russia," he added.

“What we’re focused on right now are practical ways to confront Iran in those areas and not on the Iran deal,” said Kirby.

Kirby’s comments were in response to a question about the video which surfaced earlier on Tuesday of President Joe Biden saying the Iran deal is “dead”.

The video was recorded during an election rally in Oceanside, California, last month. Biden is seen in a short conversation with a woman who attended the rally and who asked him to announce that the Iran deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), is dead.

Biden responded that he would not “for a lot of reasons" before adding, “It is dead, but we are not gonna announce it. Long story."

Indirect talks between the US and Iran on a return to the 2015 deal have been stalled since September, shortly after Iran announced it had submitted its comments to the US response to the European Union’s draft for reviving the deal.

A senior Biden administration official said the Iranian response "is not at all encouraging.”

A US official later said that the efforts to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal have “hit a wall” because of Iran's insistence on the closure of the UN nuclear watchdog's investigations.

More recently, the US envoy for Iran, Robert Malley, said that Iran's crackdown on protesters and the sale of drones to Russia have turned the United States' focus away from reviving the nuclear deal.