We Will Never Return to Iran Nuclear Deal: US State Department Spokesperson
In an interview with Fox News Radio, US State Department Spokesperson Morgan Ortagus said the United States will never return to Iran nuclear deal and the American government wants to negotiate a new and better deal.
“We know that the former Iran deal, that deal did, it actually provided a path for Iranians to get the nuclear weapon; it just delayed it. It was going to take time, but it was essentially kicking the can down to another for another administration to deal with,” Ortagus told Fox News Radio.
Ortagus once again repeated the Trump administration’s criticism of the Obama administration for delivering billions of dollars to Iran for sanction relief, which Iran has used to fund its proxy groups in the region.
“It's not just about them getting the money. It's really about what did they do with the money,” she emphasized. “If they had gotten the money and said we are going to build roads, schools, public health infrastructure and did all these things to start behaving normally, it would be different. But they use that money to fund their terrorist groups throughout the region. Iran remains the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism.”
The State Department spokesperson concluded: So you have to ask yourself, why does that matter? It matters because we just gave the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism billions of dollars to fund more terrorism. Call me crazy, I don't think that's very logical."
US presidential candidate Joe Biden in an opinion piece in CNN said recently that under his administration, the United States will rejoin the JCPOA if Iran returns to its commitments and will then negotiate to strengthen the nuclear agreement and address other issues.
However, US Democrat Senator Bob Menendez, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said on Wednesday that if Joe Biden becomes president, he would support rejoining the Iran nuclear deal if the deal is revised to correct the shortcomings of the Obama-era agreement. The Senator however added that Biden has to deal with Iran based on a current perspective and not simply according to conditions prevailing five years ago when the nuclear agreement was reached.