US has proposal for a mutual return to Iran nuclear deal, White House says

Tehran, however, maintains that resurrection of the landmark deal depends solely on Washington’s “will”

Washington has developed a proposal for a mutual return to the 2015 JCPOA nuclear deal with Iran, US President Joe Biden said Monday. The president made the remark in a statement ahead of the tenth Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference.

“Through diplomacy – in coordination with our Allies and regional partners – we have developed a proposal to secure a mutual return to full implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action to ensure that Iran does not acquire a nuclear weapon,” Biden said, without elaborating any further.

Iran, in turn, said that the revival of the nuclear deal relies primarily on the US’ “will” and that Washington must show its readiness to achieve a long-term result. In the near future, “we can possibly witness a new round of the talks,” Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said.

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“We expect the Europeans, who emphasize the necessity of the return to the [nuclear] agreement, to reiterate to the US that resuming the implementation of the deal depends on the will of the US and this is a two-way road,” Kanaani told his weekly press event on Monday.

The multilateral JCPOA deal has been left in limbo since the 2018 move by then-US President Donald Trump, who unilaterally withdrew from the agreement. While Trump accused Tehran of somehow violating the “spirit” of the deal, international observers have repeatedly confirmed Iran’s compliance with it.

Since then, Washington re-imposed old and introduced new sanctions against Tehran. In response, Iran has gradually suspended its JCPOA obligations, installing new uranium-enriching equipment and expanding its nuclear program. So far, the diplomatic efforts to revive the agreement have not yielded any tangible results despite multiple rounds of multinational talks taking place.