A return to the 2015 nuclear deal remains the best outcome for the United States, Iran and the world, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said at global nonproliferation discussions at the United Nations on Monday.
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Blinken also repeated a US warning that North Korea is preparing to conduct its seventh nuclear test.
US President Joe Biden said earlier that Washington was ready to outline a new nuclear arms deal with Russia and called on Moscow to demonstrate its ability to negotiate in good faith at the talks that began on Monday.
Still, despite repeated refrains by Biden administration officials that negotiations to revive the Iran nuclear deal cannot go on indefinitely, which the US president himself reiterated during the Israel leg of his Middle East trip in mid-July, Washington has refused to set a deadline for ending talks even though they appear to be on life support and are possibly unsalvagable given Tehran's recent claims that it could easily build a bomb.
Richard Goldberg, a senior adviser at the Washington, D.C.-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), said that the fact the Biden administration continues to make such statements "raises serious doubts as to whether they will ever walk away from the agreement, and if the policy is merely to continue indefinitely to show a willingness to make a deal."
Goldberg said that some ostensible supporters of the JCPOA are now opposed to the terms that are on the negotiating table in Vienna.
"There is a shrinking circle of committed ideologues to the concept of the JCPOA, whereas even those who once saw value in the JCPOA now understand that there's no positive non-proliferation value at this point in returning to the old agreement," he said.
Goldberg interprets the US administration's continued comments that time is running out as a tacit admission that Iran will eventually become a nuclear threshold state, and that a change in policy will only take place if the Islamic republic engages in "active weaponization."
"There are elements of weaponization that are already underway," Goldberg said. "This is the fallacy. If you are waiting for some sort of intelligence to show you that they're building a bomb, you may be too late because what they've done is effectively created the assembly line for the bomb and they're perfecting the assembly line without producing any intelligence that shows you they're putting the car together."
'Iran is not necessarily the priority for the US'
Then there is Iran's decision in June to pull the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) cameras from several nuclear sites. IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said at the time that if the monitoring was not restored in three to four weeks then "this would be a fatal blow" to the nuclear deal.
"There are things going on potentially right now that cannot be verified in the future," the FDD's Goldberg said.
By contrast, Eyal Zisser, vice-rector of Tel Aviv University and a lecturer in its Middle East history department, suggests that a renewed nuclear deal still has value and that no end-date for forging one should be set.
"The whole idea is to prevent Iran from becoming nuclear. As long as the West believes that it can delay the process through negotiations, then why put a deadline," he said. "Also, it's in Iran's interest to reach a deal in order to lift sanctions."
Zisser views the US administration's statements about a shrinking timeframe for an accord as a means to pressure Iran to reach an agreement.
Similarly, he said that Iranian claims that they are on the threshold of building a bomb – notably, an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-linked social media channel on Saturday threatened to reduce New York City to "hellish ruins" – are geared towards pressuring the US.
Zisser conceded that a new deal "doesn't mean that the Iranians will give up any of their achievements, any of the [nuclear] progress that they've made."
But that might be enough for Washington, he said, as Iran is not necessarily the priority for the US, as it is for the Israelis.
"The Americans don't want to be challenged by Iran, and a nuclear-armed Iran would be a challenge. It's all about delaying it to the next president and the next one and the one that comes after," he said.
On the other hand, the FDD's Goldberg believes that a revived nuclear deal is as dangerous for Washington as it is for Jerusalem, noting that the Iranians have been working towards building intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of hitting the US
Resuscitating the accord, he said, "would fund massive expansions of the Iranians's nuclear weapons-related missile programs."
On Monday, the United States on Monday imposed sanctions on Chinese and other firms it said helped to sell tens of millions of dollars in Iranian oil and petrochemical products to East Asia as it seeks to raise pressure on Tehran to curb its nuclear program.
The US Treasury and the US State departments both imposed sanctions on a total of six companies, four based in Hong Kong, one in Singapore, and one in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in actions that were announced in separate statements.
The Treasury accused Persian Gulf Petrochemical Industry Commercial Co. (PGPICC), one of Iran's largest petrochemical brokers, of using the firms to facilitate the sale of Iranian petroleum and petrochemical products to East Asia.
The Treasury targeted UAE-based Blue Cactus Heavy Equipment and Machinery Spare Parts Trading, which it said helped sell millions of dollars of Iranian-origin petroleum products to Hong Kong-based Triliance Petrochemical, which has previously been sanctioned by the United States.
It also targeted Hong Kong-based Farwell Canyon HK Limited and Shekufei International Trading Co., Limited for facilitating such sales for onward shipment to buyers in East Asia.
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The Treasury accused PGPICC of using the firms' bank accounts, along with those of Hong Kong and Malaysia-based PZNFR Trading Limited, to collect millions of dollars in proceeds.
Separately, the State Department sanctioned Singapore-based Pioneer Ship Management PTE LTD for allegedly managing a vessel that carried Iranian petroleum products and Hong Kong-based Golden Warrior Shipping for alleged transactions related to Iranian oil and petroleum products.
The actions freeze US-based assets and generally bar Americans from dealing with them. Others that engage in certain transactions with the targeted firms also risk being sanctioned.
The steps represent the third round of US Iran-related sanctions against Chinese firms in the last two months.
JNS.org contributed to this report.
