SULAIMANI (ESTA) — Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif suggested a way to overcome the U.S.-Iranian impasse over who goes first in returning to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
“There can be a mechanism to basically either synchronize it or coordinate what can be done,” Zarif told CNN on Monday when asked how to bridge the gap, according to Reuters.
Zarif’s stance was a shift from his position, expressed in a January 22 article in which he said the U.S. should remove sanctions before Iran returned to the deal.
Each government wants the other to resume compliance first with the deal, which former U.S. President Donald Trump abandoned in 2018 but which President Joe Biden as said he will rejoin if Iran resumed “strict” compliance.
Under the accord, Iran agreed to limit its nuclear program to make it harder for it to develop nuclear weapons in return for relief from U.S. and other economic sanctions.
Zarif noted the pact created a Joint Commission coordinated by the European Union foreign policy chief, now Josep Borrell. Borrell “can … sort of choreograph the actions” needed from both sides, Zarif told CNN.
The commission includes the EU and the seven parties to the deal: Iran, Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States.
After abandoning the deal, Trump reimposed U.S. sanctions and imposed new U.S. economic penalties on Iran.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in an interview with NBC news that Iran was weeks away” from the ability to produce the fissile material needed for a nuclear weapon.
He also said the Biden administration would return to the Iran nuclear provided Tehran return to compliance and then negotiate a “longer and stronger” accord.
Earlier this month, Iran resumed enriching uranium to 20% fissile strength at its underground Fordow nuclear plant, a level Tehran achieved before the 2015 accord.
It had earlier breached the deal’s 3.67% limit on the purity to which it can refine uranium, but it had only gone up to 4.5% so far, well short of the 20% level and of the 90% needed to fuel an atomic bomb.
