President Joe Biden just admitted that talks to revive the nuclear deal between Iran and the U.S. have ended, according to reports.
In a video recorded in November, Biden was asked about the issue by an unidentified woman. The president then said that talks had ceased and the nuclear deal would not be renegotiated.
#BREAKING: @POTUS is asked when he’s going to declare #Iran JCPOA dead and he says: “It is dead but we’re not gonna announce it.” 😂 pic.twitter.com/YjZGmsP5lW
— Jason Brodsky (@JasonMBrodsky) December 20, 2022
“It is dead, but we are not gonna announce it. Long story,” he told the woman, who is heard warning him of the consequences of neglecting the agreement.
A spokesperson for the White House National Security Council has also confirmed that the Biden administration has moved on from the effort to resume participation by both sides of the accord, saying “The JCPOA is not our focus right now. It’s not on the agenda.”
The White House had long been under pressure to renege on the agreement, with Republicans and centrist Democrats opposing it in favor of one with stricter requirements for Iranian involvement.
“The unraveling of JCPOA began with the nationwide uprising in 2017 and now we see it in the daily anti-regime protests,” Dr. Ramesh Sepehrrad of the Organization of Iranian American Communities said in a statement on Monday.
Those who disagree with the Biden administration’s approach to Iran are also less certain that the White House has abandoned one of the Obama administration’s most notable foreign policy accomplishments.
Former President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, said in a statement that the Biden administration would never give up trying to persuade Tehran to negotiate a return to that 2015 accord designed to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
“For the Biden administration, the JCPOA has theological significance,” Bolton said. “For them, the dream will never die.”
This comes after reports of Biden reportedly ignoring Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid’s calls surfaced in August. Lapid requested a meeting with Biden during his visit to the U.S. in September, but the White House cited the president’s summer vacation for neglecting the prime minister’s calls.
Biden previously said that the U.S. would attack Iran as “a last resort,” which some view as stopping short of a credible military threat that would deter the Islamic nation from developing a nuclear weapon.
