After Iran’s supreme leader signaled his willingness to return to nuclear negotiations with the United States, the Biden administration cast doubt on the possibility of resuming talks in the future.
“We will judge Iran’s leadership by its actions, not its words,” a State Department spokesman said Tuesday.
“If Iran wants to demonstrate seriousness or a new approach, it must stop nuclear escalation and start cooperating meaningfully with the IAEA,” he added, referring to the International Atomic Energy Agency, an intergovernmental watchdog that Tehran often harasses.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei gave Iran’s new president, reformist Masoud Pezeshkian, the go-ahead to restart talks with the US on Tuesday as he warned the country’s government not to trust Washington.
“This does not mean that we cannot interact with the same enemy in certain situations,” Khamenei said, according to an official transcript of his remarks. “Nothing, but don’t get your hopes up.”
A handout picture provided by the office of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei shows him (L) and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian during a meeting with the president and his cabinet in Tehran, Iran, on August 27, 2024.
Khamenei.IR/AFP via Getty Images
A State Department spokesman said the administration still sees a negotiated solution as the best way to contain Iran’s nuclear program, but Iran’s failure to cooperate with the IAEA and its escalating actions make diplomacy impossible.
“We’re a long way from anything like that,” he said.
Members of the administration also generally see the prospect of returning to indirect talks with Iran as an unfavorable political step that could prove detrimental to Vice President Kamala Harris’ and other Democrats’ chances of winning in November, some officials told ABC News.
Doubtful prospects for the resuscitation of negotiations in the coming months further reduce the slim chances of securing a deal with Iran before President Joe Biden’s time in the White House ends, all but forcing his promise to negotiate a “longer and stronger” deal. out of reach.
Khamenei’s comments Tuesday echoed the position he took when Tehran signed the 2015 nuclear pact known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA — a landmark agreement that gave Iran relief from economic sanctions in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program. .
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks during a meeting with Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian and his cabinet in Tehran, Iran, August 27, 2024.
Office of the Supreme Leader of Iran/WANA via Reuters
Former President Donald Trump withdrew the US from the deal in 2018, calling it a “horrible one-sided deal that was never done,” and imposed financial restrictions on Iran.
In those years, Khamenei’s public comments on the matter have oscillated between encouraging negotiations with the US and outright rejecting the possibility of a new pact.
Foreign policy observers say the upcoming U.S. presidential election casts uncertainty into the prospect of reaching another nuclear deal with Iran.
Trump has previously made an unsubstantiated statement that Iran is ready to accept very favorable conditions for the US at the end of the season and that he is “ready to make a deal.” But on the campaign trail, Trump — a sworn opponent of the Iranian regime — has taken an increasingly hawkish stance toward the country, which reportedly carried out a cyberattack targeting his campaign and had planned it against him and former Cabinet officials.
Harris has also promised to take an aggressive approach to curbing Iran’s malignant influence in the Middle East, but he supports the JCPOA, as well as the current administration’s efforts to cut a new deal. However, he has not made it clear that he will try to pick up where Biden left off.
Indirect talks with Iran under the Biden administration officially began in April 2021. Despite the initial optimism of the mediators, the talks finally came out after several rounds of stop-start diplomacy failed to move the two sides to an agreement.
So far, Biden has made good on another major promise regarding Iran: a declaration that the country “will never get a nuclear weapon on my watch.”
However, officials in his government say Tehran has made significant progress toward that goal in recent years.
In July, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Iran was only “a week or two away” from having the breakout capacity to produce fissile material for nuclear weapons, and the US was watching “very, very carefully” to see what the country did. will move to its nuclear weapons, a step the administration says the regime has not taken.
The US has shut down the possibility of new talks with Iran amid tensions in the Middle East, including Israel’s preemptive strike last night on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon.
