US, France warn Iran that time running out to revive deal

The United States and France on Friday warned Iran that time is running out to return to a nuclear deal, voicing fear that Tehran’s sensitive atomic activities could advance if talks drag on.

On the first high-level visit to Paris by President Joe Biden’s administration, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his French hosts saluted a new spirit of cooperation after four years of turbulence under Donald Trump.

But the two sides said that one key Biden promise — to return to the 2015 Iran accord that was trashed by Trump — is at risk if the clerical regime does not make concessions during talks that have been going on for more than two months in Vienna.

Blinken warned that the United States still has “serious differences” with Iran, which has kept negotiating since last week’s presidential election won by hardliner Ebrahim Raisi.

“There will come a point, yes, where it will be very hard to return back to the standards set by the JCPOA,” Blinken told reporters, using the acronym for the accord’s formal name.

“We haven’t reached that point — I can’t put a date on it — but it’s something that we’re conscious of.”

Blinken warned that if Iran “continues to spin ever more sophisticated centrifuges” and steps up uranium enrichment, it will bring nearer the “breakout” time at which it will be dangerously close to the ability to develop a nuclear bomb.

But Blinken said that Biden still supports a return to the accord, under which Iran had drastically scaled back its nuclear work until Trump withdrew in 2018 and imposed crippling sanctions.

“We have a national interest in trying to put the nuclear problem back in the box that it was in the JCPOA,” Blinken said.