US will rejoin nuclear deal if Iran complies with its provisions, says Secretary of State Antony Blinken

Washington: The United States is ready to rejoin the Iranian nuclear deal and start negotiations with it only if Tehran joins and complies with its provisions, US secretary of state Tony Blinken said on Wednesday.

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), popular as the Iranian nuclear deal, was one of the key foreign policy achievements of the Obama-Biden Administration. The previous Trump Administration withdrew from it.

“With regard to Iran, President (Joe) Biden has been very clear in saying that if Iran comes back into full compliance with its obligations under the JCPOA, the United States would do the same thing and then we would use that as a platform to build, with our allies and partners, what we called a longer and stronger agreement and to deal with a number of other issues that are deeply problematic in the relationship with Iran,” Blinken said.

“But we are a long way from that point. Iran is out of compliance on a number of fronts,” he said.

With regards to how the US would engage in this issue if Iran decides to come back into compliance, Blinken said the administration will build a strong team of experts and bring to bear different perspectives on the issue.

“One of the things that I feel very strongly about is that in any of the issues we’re engaged on, in any of the issues that we’re tackling and that our foreign policy has to confront, that we are constantly questioning our own assumptions and premises, that we do not engage in groupthink, that there is as much self-criticism and self-reflection as we get from, appropriately, the outside, whether it’s from you or whether it’s from people who disagree with the policies we’re pursuing,” he said.

“So I think you can expect to see that as we move forward both with regard potentially to Iran and, for that matter, to just about any other issue we tackle,” Blinken said.