Former President Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of the 2015 agreement in 2018.
Iranian officials said they are willing to once again follow the rules set out in the 2015 Iran nuclear deal but first want the U.S. to rejoin the agreement and reverse sanctions put in place during former President Donald Trump ’s administration. Trump pulled the U.S. out of the deal, known officially as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in 2018, after which Iran began violating terms of the agreement in response to new sanctions the U.S. imposed. The International Atomic Energy Agency said earlier this year that Iran alerted the agency it planned to begin enriching uranium to 20 percent purity, according to an early 2021 report by the BBC. President Joe Biden said while campaigning last year that he wanted to rejoin the agreement, and The New York Times reported last week that the U.S. and Iran had plans for „indirect“ talks about reviving the JCPOA as meetings about the agreement take place among other countries in Vienna this week. Iranian television stations quoted one of Iran’s negotiators as expressing interest in returning to the rules set out in the agreement but said Iran wanted the U.S. to rejoin it first, according to the Associated Press. A State Department spokesperson described the Vienna meetings in an email to Newsweek as a „healthy step forward.“ The top issues the spokesperson said would be discussed at the Vienna meetings include how Iran can resume following the rules set out in the 2015 agreement and what the U.S. needs to do in terms of rolling back its sanctions. The spokesperson added it is unlikely the U.S. will engage in direct talks with Iran during the meetings but said the U.S. „remains open“ to doing so. For more reporting on this story from the Associated Press, see below. The ultimate goal of the deal is to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear bomb, something it insists it doesn’t want to do.
