A newly released video showed footage of United States President Joe Biden seemingly confirming that the Iran nuclear deal is "dead," but notes that officials would not announce it because it is "complicated."
The video, which was taken on Nov. 4, showed the Democratic leader making the remarks after being questioned by a group of activists, based on footage posted by an unverified account relating to one Damon Maghsoudi.
Iran Nuclear Deal
One woman in the video asks the U.S. president if he could announce that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is dead. In response to the request, Biden confirmed that the deal was dead, noting that there were a lot of reasons behind the situation.
President Joe Biden was asked by American Iranian to announce that the Iran JCPOA deal is dead. The President responded “It is dead but we won’t announce it” and that “it’s complicated”.
— James J. Marlow (@James_J_Marlow) December 20, 2022
The President WAS aware that cameras were present. #IranRevoIution
pic.twitter.com/BqrSrg1YxL
The female protestor then said that they simply did not want any deals with the "mullahs" because they did not represent them. She continued to say that they were not considering them as their government.
Before leaving the area, Biden could be heard saying, "They'll have a nuclear weapon they'll represent." The Democratic U.S. president's remarks are perhaps the final confirmation that the Iran nuclear deal is no more as it has been increasingly dropped from the spotlight by the White House, as per Fox News.
In a statement during a Friday briefing, deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel said that they have been clear that the JCPOA was not their focus currently and noted that they candidly remain very skeptical of anything that comes out of Tehran regarding the issue.
A National Security Council spokesperson also said that they did not see a deal coming together anytime soon as Iran was killing its young people and selling UAVs to Russia amid the latter's invasion of Ukraine.
According to the Times of Israel, the video footage of Biden comes as Iran has not bowed to months of pressure to accept the final stipulations of an agreement to revive the deal. The agreement was abandoned by the president's predecessor, Donald Trump, in 2018.
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Global Relations
Since April 2021, talks to revive the JCPOA have been ongoing in Vienna, and at one point early this year, Iran and Washington seemed to be close to an agreement. However, there has been no progress after that and the European Union's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell warned in September that the two parties were "diverging."
When questioned about the video of Biden's remarks, White House national security spokesman John Kirby said that nobody was questioning its authenticity. The official noted that Washington still wanted to restore the Iran nuclear deal, but warned that doing so was not the American government's priority at the moment, given the severity of the Russia-Ukraine war.
On the other hand, the top foreign policy representatives for Iran and the European Union have signaled that they are conducting efforts to restore a 2015 nuclear deal. Iran's Foreign Minister, Hossein Amirabdollahian, and the bloc's Borrell talked during the second meeting of the Baghdad Conference for Cooperation and Partnership.
Ali Bagheri Kani, Iran's top negotiator in the nuclear talks, and Enrique Mora, the bloc's coordinator, were also present at the event. In a Twitter post, Borrell said that the meeting was a necessary talk amid deteriorating Iran-EU relations, Aljazeera reported.
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