President Joe Biden said “it’s not time to give up” on reviving the accord restraining Iran’s nuclear program as talks between world powers drag on in Vienna.
“There is some progress being made,” but “it remains to be seen” if Tehran will make a deal, Biden said in a news conference Wednesday marking his first year in office.
Biden’s negotiators say they’ve largely agreed on the sanctions that would be lifted in exchange for Iran coming back into compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. But they’re unable to satisfy Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s demand for guarantees that a future U.S. administration won’t quit the deal as former President Donald Trump did in 2018.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently told an interviewer that Iran is weeks away from being able to produce enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon, far short of the deal’s requirement to limit that breakout time to at least a year.
“It’s fair to say that the decision to pull out of the nuclear agreement was one of the worst decisions made in recent U.S. foreign policy history,” Blinken told the “Pod Save the World” podcast.