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Amir-Abdollahian also said that Iran’s Raisi administration, in power since August, was moving to a balanced foreign policy; the implication was that Iran was going to deprioritise relations with the west.
In what may have been a further attempt to bring Iran back to the negotiating table, the US E3 joint statement issued in Rome also contained no demand that Tehran as part of any agreement, commit to follow-on negotiations about what the west sees as its destabilising behaviour in the region backing militant groups in various zones of conflict.
The remaining signatories to the JCPOA are Iran, France, Germany, the UK, Russia and China, though the accord by now is hardly functioning.
Mikhail Ulyanov, Russian ambassador to multilateral bodies in Vienna, where talks on the future of the accord were paused in June to await the result of the Iranian presidential election that put Ebrahim Raisi in office and allow the new Iranian government to review its JCPOA policy and negotiating strategy, welcomed Biden’s pledge.
Biden noted that the US was still paying the price of bad choices made by the Trump administration, including the decision to quit the nuclear deal. But he reiterated that he and European leaders at the summit had agreed diplomacy was the best way forward in handling Iran over the future of the nuclear deal. He said: “We came together to reiterate our shared belief that diplomacy is the best way to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon and discussed how best to encourage Iran to resume serious good faith negotiations”.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on October 31 said that Washington was “absolutely in lock step” with Britain, Germany and France on getting Iran back into a functioning JCPOA, but he added that it was not clear if Tehran was willing to rejoin the talks in a “meaningful way”.
“It really depends on whether Iran is serious about doing that [reviving the JCPOA],” Blinken said. “All of our countries, working by the way with Russia and China, believe strongly that that would be the best path forward,” he added.
“But we do not yet know whether Iran is willing to come back to engage in a meaningful way,” Blinken said. “But if it isn’t, if it won’t, then we are looking together at all of the options necessary to deal with this problem.”
7 IRAN Country Report November 2021 www.intellinews.com