CNN
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The United States has sent its response to the European Union on a proposal to try to save the Iran nuclear dealthe US State Department confirmed on Wednesday.
“As you know, we have received Iran’s comments on the final text proposed by the EU through the EU. Our review of these comments is now complete. We responded to the EU today,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement.
He did not provide details on the response, but the United States is not expected to accept what Iran has offered without seeking changes and further negotiations.
US officials had expressed some optimism about the latest efforts to revive the nuclear deal, which the United States abandoned in 2018 under the Trump administration and which Tehran has increasingly violated since then. However, they pointed out that gaps remained between the two sides.
He is also expected to face significant national opposition from U.S. congressional lawmakers and has been denounced by Israel, which the prime minister said “will act to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear state”. Negotiations on the nuclear deal are also taking place amid continued concerns about threats from Iranian and Iran-backed military groups.
EU spokeswoman Nabila Massrali confirmed that she “received the American response and passed it on to Iran”.
Earlier on Wednesday, a spokesperson for Iran’s Foreign Ministry said it had received the US response via the EU and “thorough consideration of the US side’s views has begun.”
“Iran will share its comments with the coordinator once the review is completed,” Nasser Kanaani said, according to a statement from Iran’s Foreign Ministry.
The American response was transmitted more than a week after Iran sent his response to what top EU diplomat Josep Borrell called “a final text” to restore the nuclear deal. Borrell said on Monday the Iranian response was “reasonable”.
Price said on Monday that the US government had worked “as quickly as possible, as methodically as possible, and as carefully as possible to ensure that our response was complete”, noting that it “takes Iranian comments into account”.
Biden administration officials say Tehran has dropped a number of demands that were in previous versions of the text to restore the 2015 deal, including the demand that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC ) be removed from the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations.
However, US officials have indicated that there are still issues to be resolved before the US agrees to join the agreement – officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Iran has increasingly violated its commitments to the accord and expanded its nuclear program following the US withdrawal.
“We have always said that if Iran is ready to rejoin the JCPOA and if it is ready to drop the demands that are foreign to the JCPOA, that is, the demands that Iran has put forward before and which have nothing to do with the Iran deal, then we would be willing on a mutual basis to re-enter the Iran deal,” Price said Wednesday morning in an interview on the New Day show. from CNN.
“We’re closer today, but we’re still not there,” he said.
The United States sent its response to the EU a day after Israeli national security adviser Eyal Hulata met his counterpart Jake Sullivan in Washington. On Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid reiterated his country’s opposition to “this deal because it is bad”.
Lapid called on the United States and other parties to the deal to pull out of negotiations and said “negotiators are ready to make concessions.”
“We have been clear to everyone: if an agreement is signed, it does not bind Israel. We will act to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear state,” he told a news conference in Jerusalem.
Biden administration officials have denied making concessions to Tehran and argued resuming the deal was the best way to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
A senior administration official said that in the event of full mutual reapplication of the agreement, a number of constraints would come into effect. They include a ban on Iran “enriching and storing uranium above very limited levels”, the removal of “thousands of advanced centrifuges…including all enriching centrifuges in the fortified underground facility of Fordow”, and “a ban on the reprocessing and redesign of a reactor that could otherwise be used to produce weapons-grade plutonium.
“Strict limits on Iranian enrichment would mean that even if Iran backed out of the deal to seek a nuclear weapon, it would take at least six months to do so,” the official said.
“In addition to the nuclear restraints that Iran would have to implement, the IAEA would again be able to implement the most comprehensive inspections regime ever negotiated, allowing it to detect any Iranian effort to covertly pursue a nuclear weapon. nuclear,” they added. “Much of this international oversight would remain in place for an indefinite period.”