Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi on Tuesday accused the United States of "drifting away" rather than making a decision to revive the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran.
The 2015 accord with the major powers, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), left Iran sanctions in return for curbing its nuclear program. He has been on life support since President Donald Trump removed the United States from him in 2018, but intermittent talks have been ongoing since April 2021 to put him back on it.
Today it is the Americans who have to make a decision, but they hesitate and hesitate," Raisi told reporters in Tehran. Raisi's comments follow weeks of demonstrations in Iran sparked by the September 16 death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, 16, after she was arrested for allegedly violating the country's strict dress code for women
The United States and other western parties to the deal have imposed new sanctions on Iran over its response to Amini's protests. "The Islamic Republic wants to achieve the lifting of sanctions, but at the same time has the neutralization of sanctions on its agenda," Raisi said without elaborating.
On Saturday, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian accused the United States of "applying political and psychological pressure on Iran to secure concessions at the negotiations." Washington said earlier this month that a return to the deal was unlikely in the near future. "It's not that we don't want a reimplementation of the JCPOA, of course we do."
We just aren't able to...that's a likely outcome in the near future," White House spokesman John Kirby told reporters Oct. 13. For now, Washington's "focus" is "Holding the Iranian authorities accountable for what they are doing," Kirby added.