Blinken Sees ‘Urgency’ in Resolving Iran’s Nuclear Problem

Iran

June 14th, 6:09am

Washington - Ali Barada

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken boards his airplane prior to departing from Cornwall Airport Newquay, following his visit to the G7 summit, before heading to Brussels, in Newquay, Cornwall, Britain, Juna 12, 2021. Saul Loeb/Pool via REUTERS

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that there is an urgent need to know whether the Vienna Talks will help stop Iran’s progress in its nuclear program. “First, when it comes to the nuclear talks, we’re not trading any other issues or interests for the sake of the nuclear talks… Second, I’m not going to get ahead of the President. I suspect he’ll be taking this up with President (Vladimir) Putin in a couple of days,” he responded to a CBS question. He added that the “meeting with President Putin is not happening in a vacuum. The President will be coming off of the G7, the NATO summit, the meeting with the European Union’s leaders. When we bring the world’s democracies together, it’s an incredibly powerful force militarily, economically, politically, diplomatically.” “Since we pulled out of the nuclear deal and then Iran began to ignore the constraints that the deal had imposed on it, it has been galloping forward and it’s enriching more material. It’s enriching at higher levels, degrees than were allowed under the agreement. It is gaining knowledge. And if this goes on a lot longer, if they continue to gallop ahead, then you’re right, they’re going to have knowledge that’s going to be very hard to reverse, which I think puts some urgency in seeing if we can put the nuclear problem back in the box that the agreement had put it in that.” In another context, personal lawyer for former President Donald Trump Rudy Giuliani slammed President Joe Biden for wanting to rejoin the Iranian nuclear accord. “He’s caving into Iran before Iran even wants to make a deal,” Giuliani said in an interview that aired Sunday. “He’s already let a couple of very big Iranian terrorist businesspeople off the hook. He’s already taken sanctions away from Iranian companies that have been dealing in oil,” he added. “So, already Iran has gotten concessions, without giving up anything that they want to get from us. It’s the worst way to negotiate a deal, particularly with a regime of terror,” he said. Giuliani said that Biden has “displayed a level of weakness that, I don’t know …” “I remember years ago when Kennedy did this and made that mistake with Khrushchev. Khrushchev took it as a sign of weakness, and we got the Cuban missile crisis. Well, Kennedy straightened them out then, but I’m not sure that Biden will be able to do it,” Giuliani stated.

from Asharq AL-awsat https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/3026241/blinken-sees-%E2%80%98urgency%E2%80%99-resolving-iran%E2%80%99s-nuclear-problem