Blinken Discusses Iran with UK, French, German Ministers

The Biden administration has begun mapping out how the United States might rejoin the international nuclear deal with Iran, as the White House pledged Friday to tightly align its Iran policy with European nations sidelined by the Trump administration.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken discussed Iran and other issues on Friday in a virtual meeting with his British, French and German counterparts as the group weighs how to revive the Iran nuclear deal.  The U.S. State Department said beside Iran, other issues including the coronavirus pandemic, Myanmar, Russia, China and climate change were also discussed and Blinken “underscored the U.S. commitment to coordinated action to  overcome  global challenges.”

“We just had a in-depth and important conversation on Iran ... to handle together nuclear and regional security challenges,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on Twitter. Britain’s Dominic Raab and Germany’s Heiko Maas also took part in the meeting.

The high-level conversation is the latest step by President Joe Biden’s new administration to explore how to restore the 2015 nuclear deal that Iran signed with world powers but was abandoned in 2018 by Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump.

In public briefings, White House and State Department officials stressed the administration’s efforts to coordinate with European allies and sought to lower expectations for swift action.
“This is not a decisional meeting. It’s not a meeting where policy will be concluded, and it’s not a meeting the president of the United States will be attending,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said of the gathering of senior officials at the White House. The timeline for a potential resurrection of the deal is “really up to Iran,” she added. “If Iran comes back into full compliance with the obligations” of the deal, “the United States would do the same, and then use that as a platform to build a longer and stronger agreement that also addresses other areas of concern.”

“It’s much too early to say right now how it’s going to sequence,” said one European official. The most important thing, this official said, “is that the E-3 and the Americans move forward on the same page. If they don’t, the Iranians are going to exploit the fissures.” The E-3 refers to the three European parties to the deal. The official, like others interviewed, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential conversations.

Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron offered to be an “honest broker” in any renewed diplomacy between the United States and Iran. “We do need to finalize, indeed, a new negotiation with Iran,” he said during a forum sponsored by the Atlantic Council on Thursday.

The nuclear deal limited Iran’s uranium enrichment activity to make it harder for Tehran to develop nuclear arms - an ambition Iran has long denied having - in return for the easing of U.S. and other sanctions. In abandoning the deal approved by former President Barack Obama, Trump restored the U.S. sanctions it had removed and then piled on more.

Speaking before Friday’s meeting, a source familiar with the matter said it was unlikely to delve into great detail on Iran and was a first chance for the ministers to discuss the issues.

Biden, who took office last month, has said that if Tehran returned to strict compliance with the 2015 nuclear pact, Washington would follow suit and use that as a springboard to a broader agreement that might restrict Iran’s missile development and regional activities. Tehran has insisted that Washington ease sanctions before it resumed compliance, and ruled out negotiations on wider security issues. But Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif hinted on Monday at a way to resolve the impasse over who goes first by saying the steps could be synchronized. - Reuters, Washington Post