US still sees no pathway back to Iran nuclear deal

WASHINGTON • The Biden administration still sees no "pathway back" to a revived nuclear deal with Iran after the latest round of talks in Vienna even though world powers, including Russia and China, are unified, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said.

"It's not going well in that we do not yet have a pathway back" into the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the deal that then US President Donald Trump quit in 2018, Mr Sullivan told the Council on Foreign Relations on Friday.

Restoring mutual compliance with the deal "has proven more difficult over the course of this year than we would have liked to see", Mr Sullivan added.

His remarks were yet another reminder of how little progress there has been in the seven rounds of talks in Vienna, the latest of which resumed last month following a break of almost six months.

After some early progress, officials have said the negotiating team of Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi have made demands that set the talks back and have been impossible to meet.

The silver lining is that the United States and Europe are finding rare common ground with Russia and China in talks aimed at bringing Iran back into compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal even as Teheran's "breakout time" to have a nuclear weapon grows shorter.

"What is going well is unity with our European partners, greater alignment with China and Russia," Mr Sullivan said.

"And I think an increasing recognition by Iran that it needs to come to the table in a seriously constructive way, and that our patience is by no means unlimited."

Progress in Vienna has remained stalled while Iran has continued to ramp up nuclear enrichment activities that leave it ever closer to having weapons-grade uranium.

US and European officials last Tuesday issued stern warnings that time was running out for Iran to revise a set of draft proposals presented in the Austrian capital last week.

US officials have not said what their Plan B would be if talks fail or Iran makes so much progress that returning to the 2015 accord is effectively meaningless.

For now, the Iranian nuclear talks are a priority concern for US President Joe Biden's administration and will be very much at the centre of diplomatic efforts during the first quarter of next year, a separate senior US administration official told reporters on Friday while reviewing Mr Biden's Middle East diplomacy this year.

Earlier last week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken suggested that the US could soon shift its attention away from attempting to resurrect the 2015 accord.

Perhaps in response to the diplomatic pressure, Iran and nuclear monitors with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) struck an agreement allowing the United Nations body to replace cameras at a key atomic research site near Teheran.

The decision on reinstalling the cameras - a major IAEA demand - at a centrifuge workshop that was attacked in June is "an important development" that would allow inspectors to "resume necessary continuity of knowledge", according to a statement from the Vienna-based body.

Despite the US' professed interest in shifting its foreign policy focus to Asia, Middle East issues are still a priority too, the official said, adding that Mr Biden's daily national security briefing always includes one or two items from the region.

BLOOMBERG