Washington is planning "equally" for a scenario in which the 2015 Iran nuclear deal is restored and one in which no agreement is reached, the State Department said.
Indirect negotiations between the US and Iran to revive the nuclear agreement, known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), began in the Austrian capital Vienna just over a year ago. But the talks stalled in early March and remain deadlocked over a small number of non-nuclear issues, notably Tehran's demand that Washington remove the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) from its list of foreign terrorist organisations — something the US is loath to do as it is "outside" the purview of the JCPOA.
"We are now preparing equally for either scenario," State Department spokesman Ned Price said. "A scenario in which we have a mutual return to compliance, in which that breakout time is elongated and a point at which this, what has the potential to devolve further into a nuclear crisis, is put back into a box."
Washington is also preparing "for a scenario in which there is not a JCPOA and we will have to turn to other tactics, and other approaches to fulfill what is for us a requirement… that Iran, whether there is a JCPOA or whether there is not a JCPOA, must never, never, never be allowed to acquire a nuclear weapon", Price said.
The State Department now puts Iran's breakout time — the time it would take to acquire fissile material needed for a nuclear weapon — at "weeks". Before former US president Donald Trump pulled Washington out of the deal in 2018 and reimposed sanctions on Iran, the US estimated the breakout time at "about a year".
This is the result of steps that Iran has taken to advance its nuclear activities in response to Trump's decision to exit the deal. These advancements have long bred scepticism in Washington about the benefits of a return to the deal. But Price insists that reviving the agreement is still very much "worthwhile" and in the interest of US national security.
"We are still at a point where, if we were able to negotiate a mutual return to compliance, that breakout time would be prolonged from where it is now," Price said. "We would have greater transparency. There would be those permanent, verifiable limits reimposed on Iran. That would be in our national security interest."
As of now, neither side has signalled willingness to make compromises beyond the nuclear issue, throwing into doubt the prospect for agreement, although the EU is doing its part to continue diplomacy by shuttling messages between the two capitals.
The negotiations have not stopped, they have continued "at another pace with the exchange of written messages… through the EU representative", Iran's foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said this week. "Lifting sanctions on all sectors, and getting economic guarantees is one of the most important points on our agenda," he said. "I think the US has understood well what Iran's red lines are, and we are continuing the talks [on that basis]."
