Blinken: US Not Currently Discussing Nuclear Deal With Iran

The United States government is currently not talking about a nuclear deal with Iran, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS” in an interview Sunday.

Blinken said, in the past, a nuclear “agreement was on the table. Iran either couldn’t or wouldn’t say yes,” despite a very good-faith effort by the Biden administration to conclude such a deal with Tehran.

“We’re now in a place where we’re not talking about a nuclear agreement,” Blinken stressed, adding U.S. officials are pressing their Iranian counterparts to take actions to deescalate tensions between the two countries. 

“Maybe we’ll have an environment where we can get back into a conversation about their nuclear program – right now, we’re not in it,” Blinken said.

U.S. officials are “working across a whole series of lines of effort to push back on them, to make sure we have a strong deterrent, to make sure we have the appropriate pressure, and then to see if we get back to an opportunity where we can work on a nuclear deal,” he added.

“We continue to believe strongly that diplomacy is the best way to resolve this problem,” he concluded. “That compared to all the other options, it’s the one that can produce the most sustainable, effective result. But that doesn’t mean that the other options aren’t there and, if necessary, we won’t resort to them.”