(A7) The United States and Iran on Monday blamed each other for a weeks-long impasse that has held up a return to the 2015 nuclear deal, AFP reports.
Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said that the country’s negotiators would not return to Vienna, the site of the talks to restore the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), until Washington settles outstanding issues.
“We will not be going to Vienna for new negotiations but to finalize the nuclear agreement,” Khatibzadeh told reporters in Tehran.
“If Washington answers the outstanding questions, we can go to Vienna as soon as possible,” he said, without explaining the specific questions that remained.
“At the moment, we do not yet have a definitive answer from Washington,” stated Khatibzadeh.
In Washington, State Department spokesperson Ned Price pushed back, suggesting it was Tehran that was not giving way to make a deal possible.
Price also warned that time was running out, as Iran gets closer and closer to the nuclear “breakout” point when it has achieved the capacity to construct a nuclear weapon.
“Anyone involved in the talks knows precisely who has made constructive proposals, who has introduced demands that are unrelated to the JCPOA, and how we reached this current moment,” Price said, according to AFP.
“We still believe there is an opportunity to overcome our remaining differences,” he added.
Price said Iran’s continuing nuclear development has put it within “weeks” of breakout, which would nullify the benefits of a new agreement.
“Iran has been able to shrink that breakout time from where it started to a point where we can measure it in weeks rather than months. To us that is unacceptable as a long-term proposition,” Price said.
Iran has gradually scaled back its compliance with the 2015 deal it signed with world powers, in response to former US President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the agreement in May of 2018, but has held several rounds of indirect talks with the US on a return to the agreement.
Negotiations nearly reached completion last month before Moscow demanded that its trade with Iran be exempted from Western sanctions over Ukraine, throwing the process into disarray.
On Sunday, Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said an agreement was “close” during a phone conversation with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
“We have passed on our proposals on the remaining issues to the American side through the EU senior negotiator, and now the ball is in the US court,” he said.
Price said two weeks ago that Washington has a “Plan B” if a nuclear deal with Iran is not reached and added, “The onus is on Tehran to make decisions that it might consider difficult.”
