The only way to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal is for Tehran to abandon its extraneous demands, the US State Department said on Monday, saying Washington believes everything that can be negotiated already has been.
"The only way to achieve a mutual return to compliance with the JCPOA is for Iran to drop further unacceptable demands that go beyond the scope of the JCPOA. We have long called these demands extraneous," Price claimed.
"We have spent the past 16 months or so, since the spring of 2021, going over in exhausting detail through a process that has gone on in our estimation for far too long, far longer than it needs to have gone on. We have gone over the big issues, the issues that are at the core of the two key questions that we sought to find answers to starting in the spring of last year. On the one hand, the steps that Iran would need to take to resume its compliance with the JCPOA – that is to say, the steps that Iran would need to take to once again reimpose the verifiable, permanent limits on its nuclear program – and on the other hand, the steps that the United States would need to be prepared to take in terms of sanctions relief on Iran’s nuclear program if Iran agreed to that proposition," he further claimed.
"So the big issues have been discussed. They have been tabled. We believe they have been largely settled. That was the point of the EU," Price added.
He went on to say, "Our message, I think, has been loud and clear. It has been heard by the Iranians that this negotiation is about one thing and about one thing only: it’s about the four corners of the JCPOA which is focused exclusively on Iran’s nuclear program, what Iran is permitted to do and in turn what it is required to do to demonstrate to the international community, including to international weapons inspectors, that it has permanent, verifiable limits in place on the extent of its nuclear program."
Price also told a briefing that the United States would provide its response to the European Union's "final" text on reviving the deal in private but gave no timeline.
Price's comments came as Bloomberg on Tuesday quoted a European diplomat familiar with the negotiations that European Union views Iran’s response to a proposed blueprint for reviving the 2015 nuclear deal as ‘constructive’.
Earlier on Tuesday, Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia's representative in Vienna talks on Iran nuclear deal considered Iran's response to the EU's proposed text reasonable, saying that the ball is now in the US court.
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