Negotiations between the United States and Iran to reenter the 2015 nuclear agreement are at a “stalemate,” according to a senior State Department official.
Last month, the European Union, which has been coordinating talks to reconstitute the deal, laid out a final offer, and Iran’s response to the deal was “unacceptable to us,” Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said on Friday during a live Washington Post event.
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“Well, we’re at a stalemate in the sense that Iran in the latest round of negotiations has given us a pretty tough response,” she explained, “one that’s unacceptable to us. We’ve sent back a message about what we believe is necessary and what are critical elements here.”
State Department spokesman Ned Price declined to provide details of the feedback they provided following Iran’s latest response. Earlier this week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters that a deal in the near future is “unlikely.”
“Iran’s response to the proposal put forward by the European Union is clearly a step backward and makes prospects for an agreement in the near term, I would say, unlikely,” he explained during a visit to Mexico. “Iran seems either unwilling or unable to do what is necessary to reach an agreement, and they continue to try to introduce extraneous issues to the negotiation that make an agreement less likely.”
The gloomy outlook comes weeks after National Security Council coordinator John Kirby acknowledged that Iran had abandoned several sticking points “that allowed us to get to where we are in the process,” but cautioned, “We’re not there yet.”
Sherman reiterated the administration’s stance that Iran “must never get a nuclear weapon” and said she believed reentering the agreement is the best way to ensure it doesn’t.
As the negotiations stall, the Justice Department announced earlier this week that it had charged three Iranian citizens with ransomware attacks while the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned 10 people and two entities affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps the office alleges have also been involved in malicious cyberactivities.
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“Ransomware actors and other cybercriminals, regardless of their national origin or base of operations, have targeted businesses and critical infrastructure across the board — directly threatening the physical security and economy of the United States and other nations,” said Undersecretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian Nelson. “We will continue to take coordination action with our global partners to combat and deter ransomware threats, including those associated with the IRGC.”
Additionally, in moves against U.S. interest abroad, Iran has provided drones to Russia for use in Ukraine, and it has aligned with Russian President Vladimir Putin, while the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy attempted to overtake an unmanned U.S. surface vessel weeks ago.
