ROME (AP) — President Joe Biden and a trio of European allies worked out a strategy Saturday on tactics to succeed in a diplomatic solution as Iran continues to make troubling progress with its nuclear program.
Biden’s meeting with the leaders of Germany, France and Britain, an organization known as E3, comes at a crucial time when Iran continues to enrich uranium in grades to military grades.
The president will revive the 2015 nuclear deal and get Iran back in line with the pact that would have kept the Islamic Republic at least a year away from the option of deploying a nuclear weapon.
As Biden and Germany’s Angela Merkel, France’s Emmanuel Macron and Brito’s Boris Johnson posed for a photo of the organization ahead of their closed-door talks, Biden asked when he would like stalled negotiations with Iran to resume.
“They are scheduled to resume,” he said.
Iran has still committed to a date to resume nuclear talks in Vienna, but has indicated it will do so next week with the aim of resuming negotiations by the end of November. The United States and others have expressed skepticism about Iran’s intentions.
U. S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said earlier in the week that Saturday’s assembly would feature the leaders “all making a song of the same song on this issue. “
He called it a “study in contrast to past management,” because Iran is one of the most internal spaces of divergence between the Trump administration and the Europeans.
The U. N. atomic watch body said Iran was increasingly violating the deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the 2015 nuclear deal and the United States participated in talks aimed at bringing Washington and Tehran back into compliance. Talks in Vienna have been suspended since June, when Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi took power.
Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China and the European Union are still in the deal.
Saturday’s assembly came as leaders are in Rome for the Group of 20 summit, the first leg of Biden’s five days abroad, and he also attended a United Nations weather convention in Scotland.
Biden welcomed the summit venue through Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi and joined his counterparts for the same old “family photo,” before attending the opening plenary consultation on the COVID-19 pandemic and economic recovery.
Saturday’s assembly follows days after Ali Bagheri, Iran’s deputy foreign minister and leading negotiator of the talks, tweeted that Iran had agreed to resume negotiations until the end of November and that the date for the resumption of talks “will be announced next week. “”
Sullivan said Thursday that the United States is still investigating whether Iran is serious about the negotiations.
“It’s not entirely transparent to me yet whether the Iranians are in a position to resume talks,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One as Biden flew to Rome. “We’ve heard positive signs that yes, but I think we have to. wait and see when and if they come to the negotiating table. “
Sullivan said the organization would send “clear messages” to Iran that the negotiating window “is limitless. “
“Of course, we are retaining all other features to process this program if necessary,” he said.
Saturday’s assembly comes after U. S. officials accused Iran of a drone strike on a U. S. outpost in Syria. Officials said Monday that the United States believed Iran had funded and encouraged the attack, but that drones had been introduced from Iran.
No deaths were reported as a result of the attack.
In retaliation, the U. S. Treasury Department on Friday announced new sanctions against two senior officials of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps and two affiliated corporations for offering fatal drones and similar devices to rebel equipment in Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen and Ethiopia.
At the summit, Biden set out to move toward his goal of a 15% global minimum corporate tax, the White House said, even as his domestic efforts to raise the corporate rate through that number stalled in Washington.
He also hoped to talk about measures to alleviate the global energy crisis that has led to higher prices, jeopardizing the global economic recovery. goods in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.