Biden says Iran nuclear deal ‘dead’

The clip was recorded on the sidelines of a November 4 election campaign event in California, according to Damon Maghsoudi, a software engineer living in the United States who shared it on Twitter.

Biden is asked by a member of the public to announce about the future of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

“President Biden, would you please announce that the JCPOA is dead?” a woman is heard asking.

Biden responded, “no,” adding that he could not say exactly why, “for a lot of reasons.”

“It is dead but we’re not going to announce it,” he said, before noting, “long story.”

The JCPOA was concluded in July 2015, lifting some of the United States’ draconian sanctions against Iran in exchange for the Islamic Republic making certain voluntary changes to its peaceful nuclear energy program.

Upon conclusion, the deal was adopted by the Security Council through its Resolution 2231. The United States, however, withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018 under former President Donald Trump’s signature “maximum pressure” policy. After leaving the deal, Trump returned all the sanctions that the accord had lifted.

The administration of Trump’s successor Biden had alleged a willingness to compensate for Trump’s mistake by rejoining the deal, but it has retained the sanctions as leverage and even imposed a slew of its own coercive economic measures against Tehran.

The United States has retained its obstructive and nonconstructive position throughout many rounds of talks that have been held, mostly in the Austrian capital city of Vienna, in order to examine the potential of the JCPOA’s revival and fresh removal of the American sanctions.

The Biden administration’s approach to the deal and the talks has prompted Iran to criticize Washington for the continuation of Trump’s failed aggressive policies.