Washington: US President Joe Biden’s national security adviser has warned of “an escalating nuclear crisis” with Iran as the new White House administration seeks to salvage a multinational 2015 agreement that President Donald Trump abandoned.
Jake Sullivan told an event at the US Institute of Peace on Friday that Tehran was moving towards having enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon. Returning to the deal intended to limit the country’s nuclear program was a “critical early priority” for the Biden administration, he said.
“We would like to reestablish some of the parameters and constraints around their program that have fallen away over the course of the past few years,” Sullivan said.
The White House announced on Friday that Rob Malley, who served on the Obama administration team that negotiated the original Iran deal, would serve as an envoy to the Islamic Republic.
The administration has called on Iran to return to compliance under the deal, with White House press secretary Jen Psaki saying there was an opportunity to build on the existing agreement if Iran undertakes “the significant nuclear constraints” already negotiated.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has indicated he may be open to fresh negotiations.
The Institute of Peace event also featured Sullivan’s predecessor, Trump’s national security adviser Robert O’Brien. Sullivan’s remarks on Iran were a moment of obvious friction between the men at an event intended to signal continuity in US foreign policy despite the acrimonious transition that saw Trump refuse to accept his electoral defeat and his supporters storm the US Capitol.
Read the article by Justin Sink and Anne Gearan in The Sydney Morning Herald.