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WASHINGTON, Aug 15 (Reuters) – The only way to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal is for Tehran to abandon its extraneous demands, the U.S. State Department said on Monday, saying Washington believes everything that can be negotiated already has been.
State Department spokesman Ned Price told a briefing that the United States would provide its response to the European Union’s “final” text on reviving the deal in private but gave no timeline. The EU asked for a response on Monday, diplomats said, and Iran has said it will comply.
U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration has been trying to resurrect the 2015 agreement, named the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which was abandoned by Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump in 2018. Under the deal, Tehran limited its nuclear program in exchange for relief from U.S., EU and U.N. sanctions.
“The only way to achieve a mutual return to compliance with the JCPOA is for Iran to drop further unacceptable demands that go beyond the scope of the JCPOA. We have long called these demands extraneous,” Price said. (Reporting by Simon Lewis, Humeyra Pamuk and Arshad Mohammed; Writing by Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Mark Porter and Alistair Bell)
