Iran says ball is in US' court to resolve nuclear issue

Iranian president Hassan Rohani today renewed his call for incoming US president Joe Biden to return to the 2015 nuclear agreement and to lift the economic sanctions that Donald Trump reimposed after exiting the deal in 2018.

Biden, who will assume office later today, has repeatedly said that his administration intends to bring the US back to the accord if Iran returns to full compliance with its commitments under the deal.

"If [the US] just gives a signature with respect to their commitments under [UN Security Council] resolution 2231, we too will give our signature, but no more. If they issue a command, then we in Iran will also do the same, no more," Rohani said. "But if they effectively implement their commitments, then they should know that we, too, will effectively implement ours."

"Today, the ball is in the US' and Washington's court," he said.

UN Security Council resolution 2231 endorsed the Iran nuclear deal, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that was negotiated by Barack Obama's administration. Trump repeatedly described the JCPOA as "the worst deal ever negotiated", and said that it failed to close off Iran's pathways to a nuclear weapon. He pulled the US out of the deal in mid-2018, and reimposed economic sanctions on some of Iran's most critical sectors, including oil and banking, as part of what it dubbed a "maximum pressure campaign" to bring Tehran back to the negotiating table.

While the sanctions have drastically cut Iran's ability to export crude, they appear to have accomplished the opposite of the stated goals. Iran is now theoretically far closer to producing weapons-grade material than it was in 2018, having in mid-2019 begun to gradually breach the curbs imposed on it by the JCPOA in response to the US' exit from the deal and Washington's subsequent reimposition of sanctions.

Tehran has, however, always maintained that it has not, does not, and will not, seek nuclear weapons, and that its nuclear work has only ever had civilian dimensions.

"Today is the final day of [Trump's] malevolent government, and of someone who in the past four years succeeded in little more than oppression and corruption and the creation of problems not only for his people, but those of the world," Rohani said. "For the world, and for our people, it has become even more evident that policies of maximum pressure and economic terrorism against Iran have failed 100pc."

But Biden's nominee for secretary of state Tony Blinken yesterday poured cold water on the possibility of the US making a quick return to the JCPOA, and in turn a quick lifting of sanctions on Iran, stressing it was very much dependent on what Iran would be willing to do over the coming weeks and months.

"We would have to see, once the president-elect is in office, what steps Iran actually is prepared to take," Blinken told the Senate foreign relations committee during his confirmation hearing. "We would then have to evaluate whether they are actually making good on coming back into compliance with their obligations."

By Nader Itayim