Blinken Declares JCPOA Talks Failure, Threatens War on Iran

Dec. 4, 2021 (EIRNS)—Secretary of State Antony Blinken has declared the Vienna talks on restoring the JCPOA on Iran’s nuclear regimen, the 7th round of which ended yesterday, a failure. “The path for diplomacy seems to be failing,” he told Reuters NEXT Global Conference yesterday. He admitted that President Donald Trump’s 2018 decision to pull out of the 2015 nuclear agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was “disastrous” because “what’s happened since is that Iran has used that as an excuse, despite the maximum pressure applied against Iran, to also renege on its commitments under the agreement and to inexorably rebuild the nuclear program that the agreement had put in a box.” Not once did Blinken acknowledge Iran’s rights under the JCPOA—to include the right to take measures in response to the failure of other parties to the agreement to live up to their own obligations. Nor did he otherwise even mention that the Biden administration has continued the U.S. sanctions imposed by Trump, not because of anything that Iran did, but because Trump considered it “the worst deal ever.” Instead, it’s as if Blinken’s definition of “diplomacy” in this case is that Iran must totally surrender to U.S. demands before the U.S. will give even one inch.

“We had six months of talks before the Iranian elections,” Blinken continued.

“We actually made real progress in working through differences and coming close to being able to get to a place where we would have a mutual return with both countries making good on their commitments. Then we had a huge gap after the elections where the new government refused to engage. ... what we’ve seen in the last couple of days is that Iran right now does not seem to be serious about doing what’s necessary to return to compliance, which is why we ended this round of talks in Vienna.”

Blinken said that the U.S. was going to consult with the three European members of JCPOA—France, Britain, Germany—and also members Russia, China, as well as others, including Israel. “And we will see if Iran has any interest in engaging seriously, but the window is very, very tight, because what is not acceptable and what we will not allow to happen is for Iran to try to drag out this process while continuing to move forward inexorably in building up its program,” he said. “So we’ve said all along that if the path to a return to compliance with the agreement turns out to be a dead end, we will pursue other options.”

“So Iran has some very important decisions to make in the days ahead,” he concluded. “And as I said, we—it will not be a case where they can continue to advance their program and tread water on talks. We’re either going to get back into compliance with the agreement, or we’re going to have to look at dealing with this problem in other ways.”