A video circulating on social media shows President Joe Biden saying the nuclear deal with Iran, which is still under negotiations with world powers, “is dead” but the U.S. will not make a formal announcement.
The clip, recorded on November 4, is the strongest confirmation to date the Biden administration believes there’s no hope in resuscitating the tattered deal, from which Donald Trump withdrew in 2018.
Biden is asked by a group of Iranian Americans about the status of the deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
“President Biden, would you please announce that the JCPOA is dead?” a woman is heard asking.
Biden responded, “No,” and when pressed to answer why, went on to say, “for a lot of reasons.”
“It is dead but we’re not going to announce it,” Biden said, before adding, “long story.”
The off-camera woman is then heard saying, “We just don’t want any deals with the mullahs, they don’t represent us.”
Biden replied: “I know they don’t represent you, but they will have a nuclear weapon that they will represent.”
The video was also shared by Jason Brodsky, policy director of United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) and reported by the London-based opposition news site Iran International.
Brodsky told Newsweek Biden’s comments “are a reflection of reality” and that the JCPOA, “has been dead for some time.”
“The non-proliferation benefits that the deal promised are not worth the sanctions relief offered,” he said. “The JCPOA is based on a political, geopolitical, and technical reality from 2015 that does not exist anymore. There is also no sustainable political constituency in the United States to keep it alive.”
Brodsky said Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has not been interested in reviving the deal for two years.
His regime’s enhancement of enrichment capacity, removal of International Atomic Energy Agency surveillance cameras and transfer of arms to Russia for use against Ukraine “have sealed the JCPOA’s fate.”
“I think the Biden administration wants to keep the corpse of the deal on the table to prevent Tehran from enriching to 90 percent and escalating further. But there are real questions as to whether there is adequate deterrence in place to prevent that from happening,” Brodsky said.
The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, last week said the deal was still the “best option” in stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
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