Washington:
The United States hopes to restart nuclear talks with Iran quickly, a senior US official mentioned Monday, though noting “alarming” progress by Tehran on building nuclear capacity.
“We’re hopeful we can be back in Vienna (for talks)… in a fairly short period of time,” the senior administration official, who spoke on situation of anonymity, told reporters.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman mentioned Monday that the new round of discussions could start by early November.
Iran’s nuclear activity will be at the center of talks in between US and Israeli national safety teams in Washington on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Israeli National Security Advisor Eyal Hulata and his White House counterpart, Jake Sullivan, will join a meeting of the US-Israel Strategic Consultative Group, which groups representatives from each countries’ diplomatic, military and intelligence agencies.
President Joe Biden — who reversed his predecessor Donald Trump’s choice to pull the United States from international negotiations on curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions — is keen to resolve the standoff diplomatically.
“The path in Vienna for negotiations does remain open,” the US official mentioned. “The Iranians are sending indications to a number of parties that they are preparing to come back to Vienna and of course we will have to see whether they reengage in that process constructively or not.”
Despite Israeli skepticism, the Biden administration believes “very strongly that the diplomatic path remains the best,” the official mentioned.
However, the official mentioned the White House and Israel’s new government agree that Iran has made speedy advances considering that Trump quit the international work to monitor Tehran’s nuclear activities in return for sanctions relief.
Tehran insists that it does not seek nuclear weapons, only an power market.
“We have a common assessment of the extent to which Iran’s nuclear program has dramatically broken out of the box since the previous administration left the Iran nuclear deal,” the official mentioned.
“The breakout time, meaning stockpiles of enriched uranium and other ways to look at this, it’s gone from about 12 months down to a period of a few months. So obviously that’s quite alarming.”
The official mentioned the United States believes diplomacy will be “the best way to put a ceiling on the program and roll back the gains that Iran has made in recent years.”
However, there is no movement to lifting sanctions and if diplomacy does not work “there are other avenues.”
“We think the onus right now is on the Iranian side,” the official mentioned.
(This story has not been edited by TheSpuzz employees and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)