WASHINGTON, February 1. /TASS/. The US government believes that the sides have just a "handful of weeks left" to reach an agreement restoring the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on Iran’s nuclear program, a senior US Department of State official has told reporters.

"We are in the final stretch because, as we’ve said now for some time, this can’t go on forever because of Iran’s nuclear advances, the official said. "Given the pace of Iran’s advances, its nuclear advances, we only have a handful of weeks left to get a deal, after which point it will unfortunately be no longer possible to return to the JCPOA and to recapture the nonproliferation benefits that the deal provided for us."

"This is not a prediction. It’s not a threat. It’s not an artificial deadline. It’s just a requirement that we’ve conveyed indirectly to Iran and to all our P5+1 partners for some time," he added.

The US administration urges Iran to engage in direct talks about the nuclear deal, seeing it as the quickest and most efficient way to have it reinstated.

"If our goal is to reach an understanding quickly <…>, the optimal way to do that in any negotiation is for the parties that have the most at stake to meet directly," the official said. "That’s been our view from the outset. We’re prepared to meet with Iran if they are prepared to meet with us."

"This is a complicated negotiation with room for a lot of misunderstanding, a lot of misinterpretation and miscommunication. And we think it would be facilitated by direct talks and accelerated by direct talks," he continued. "We’re not begging for a meeting. <…> We just think that it would be the logical step to take if in fact we are determined to do everything possible to get back into deal."

US doubts

According to the official, Washington sees the possibility of Iran not returning to compliance with its obligation under the JCPOA and is getting ready for this scenario as well.

"We know that it is very possible that Iran chooses not to go down that path, and we are ready to deal with that contingency. We hope that’s not the decision that Iran makes, but we are prepared to deal with either one of them," he said.

"Now is the time <…> for Iran to decide whether it’s prepared to make those decisions necessary for a mutual return to compliance with the JCPOA," the US diplomat added.

Iranian nuclear deal

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), also known as the Iran nuclear deal, was signed between Iran, the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (Russia, the United Kingdom, China, the United States and France) and Germany in 2015. Under the deal, Iran undertook to curb its nuclear activities and place them under the total control of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in exchange for the abandonment of the sanctions imposed previously by the United Nations Security Council, the European Union and the United States over its nuclear program.

The future of the deal was called into question after the United States’ unilateral withdrawal in May 2018 and Washington’s unilateral oil export sanctions against Teheran. Iran argued that all the other participants, Europeans in the first place, were ignoring some of their own obligations in the economic sphere, thus making the deal in its current shape senseless. This said, it began to gradually scale down its commitments under the deal.

The Joint Commission of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) has had seven offline meetings in Vienna since April 2021 to find ways to restore the nuclear deal in its original form. The sides discuss prospects for the United States’ possible return to the deal, steps needed to ensure full compliance with the deal’s terms by Iran, and issues of lifting the anti-Iranian sanctions.

The eighth round of talks to restore the deal kicked off on December 27, 2021 and resumed after a New Year pause on January 3, 2022. It is expected to be the last one as the negotiators are set to finish the work in February.