Iranian nuclear power – to the United States, “the ball is in Tehran’s court”

Recent weeks’ hopes seem to have been dashed: the United States is once again openly raising the possibility of talks failing to secure a nuclear deal with Iran, threatening Iran with a more ambiguous blueprint.

“This kind of agreement is not immediate or definitive,” U.S. diplomatic spokesman Nate Price said on Tuesday, adding that he had already issued such a warning the previous day. “We still have a number of difficult topics to try to resolve,” he added. According to him, “the ball is in Tehran’s court” to make “difficult” decisions – Washington considered it “ready” for its part.

The change in tone is obvious. In early March, after eleven months of complicated talks, a compromise between Vienna and Iran appeared immediately to revive the deal that would prevent it from acquiring a nuclear bomb.

New Russian demands linked to Western sanctions against Moscow for the war in Ukraine have pushed negotiators to a standstill. But once the ban was lifted, the road became almost clear, with Washington estimating “close” to a breakthrough a week earlier. Negotiators hoped that the Iranian New Year, celebrated on Sunday, would end after the festive season in Nowruz.

The Iran nuclear deal in 2015 lifted sanctions against Iran under international oversight to ensure they remained strictly civilian and peaceful. But under President Donald Trump, the United States pulled out of the deal in 2018 and re-established its sanctions. In response, Tehran freed itself from key restrictions on its nuclear program.

Since Joe Biden’s visit to the White House last year, negotiations to secure the deal have been in the nail in the coffin of lifting U.S. sanctions against Iran’s return. According to a source familiar with the matter, Tehran is demanding the removal of the ideological military revolutionary guards of the Islamic Islamic Republic of Iran from the US blockade of “foreign terrorist organizations”, and this demand is one of the last hurdles. For a compromise.

A staunch supporter of a negotiated settlement, Democrat Sen. Chris Murphy said the “Guardians” on the blacklist “had no effect in practice,” suggesting that Washington could offer concessions.

But the American right, which is hostile to the 2015 agreement and its renaissance, and Israel have drawn a red line on the issue, embarrassing the Biden administration. Has his determination over the past few days been aimed at avoiding litigation in weakness as the deal approaches? Chris Murphy warned that a compromise was “not over yet”, but he made it clear that the ball was not just in the Iranian camp.

“Significant decisions need to be made in Washington and Tehran,” he slipped. However, as negotiations stalled in late 2021, Americans began to see the threat of “alternative” options again. “President Biden has promised that Iran will not be allowed to possess nuclear weapons as long as he is in power,” he told Netflix on Monday.