The White House claimed on Tuesday that restoring the nuclear deal with Iran is “not our goal right now,” after an unsubstantiated video of US President Joe Biden calling the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) “dead” surfaced online.
“There is currently no progress in the Iran accord. We don’t expect to see much development in the foreseeable future. “That’s just not our focus,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said during a briefing call when questioned about the video.
Biden reportedly made the admission following a campaign rally in California last month. In the short video, uploaded on Twitter by Damon Maghsoudi and first published by Axios on Tuesday, a woman requests that Biden declare the JCPOA dead.
“No,” Biden says. “It’s dead, but we’re not going to say anything.”
“For a variety of reasons,” he says when she asks why. “It’s a long story.”
When informed that the demonstrators do not want any accords with the Iranian regime, Biden responds, “I know they don’t represent you. They will, however, have a nuclear bomb to represent.
The argument allegedly occurred on November 4 at a Democrat campaign event in Oceanside, California. It was unclear why it took over six weeks to become public.
The JCPOA was reached in July 2015, when Barack Obama was president of the United States and Joe Biden was his vice president, between the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and Germany (P5+1) on one side and Iran on the other. The agreement called for the removal of UN sanctions against Iran in exchange for tight monitoring of Tehran’s nuclear program.
In May 2018, Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, unilaterally rescinded the agreement on behalf of the United States. Biden, who took over for Trump in 2021, tried to resurrect it, but talks with Iranian officials fell through. The most recent attempt to save the pact was an August compromise suggested by the EU, which would penalize Washington if it reneged again.
“We were extremely close,” but Biden had “cold feet” ahead of the midterm elections, University of Tehran Professor Seyed Mohammad Marandi told Al-Mayadeen TV on Monday.