Biden in newly surfaced video: Iran nuclear deal is "dead"

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President Biden declared on the sidelines of a Nov. 4 election rally that the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran is “dead,” according to a new video that surfaced on social media late Monday, but stressed the United States won’t announce it.

This counts as the Biden administration's strongest confirmation that there's no path forward for the Iran deal, which leaves key questions about the future of the JCPOA.

The US envoy for Iran Rob Malley, in late October, said that the administration is not going to "waste time" on trying to revive the Iran nuclear deal at this time considering that the US finds the Iran riots as a more important development, in addition to Iranian support for Russia in Ukraine, and Iran's positions on its nuclear program.

#BREAKING: @POTUS is asked when he’s going to declare #Iran JCPOA dead and he says: “It is dead but we’re not gonna announce it.” 😂 pic.twitter.com/YjZGmsP5lW

— Jason Brodsky (@JasonMBrodsky) December 20, 2022

Biden made the statement in a brief exchange with a woman who was present at an election rally in Oceanside, California. She requested that Biden declare the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the official name for the Iran deal, to be null and void.

The president responded that he would not “for a lot of reasons." But then he added: “It is dead, but we are not going to announce it. Long story."

The woman then said that the current Iranian government "doesn’t represent the people." In response, he said, "I know they don’t represent you. But they will have a nuclear weapon that they'll represent."

"The JCPOA is not our focus right now. It’s not on the agenda," a White House National Security Council spokesperson told Axios.

"We don’t see a deal coming together anytime soon," the spokesperson said, pointing at the Iran riots and alleged support for Russia vis-a-vis the war in Ukraine, "Our focus is on practical ways to confront them in these areas."

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Yesterday, National Security Council Strategic Communications Coordinator John Kirby said that the prospects for the JCPOA deal to be renewed are nowhere near sight, citing reasons related to the alleged crackdowns on protesters in Iran.

"We simply don't see a deal coming together anytime soon while Iran continues to kill its own citizens, and selling UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles or drones] to Russia," Kirby said during a press briefing. "Now we don't anticipate any progress anytime in the near future. That's just not our focus."

This comes in the backdrop of a statement issued by US President Joe Biden at a political rally in California in early November in which he said that the Iran deal was "dead" and that the issue of reviving it was a matter of a "long story".

Commenting on these statements, Kirby said what Biden said was "very much in line" with the White House's position on the nuclear deal. 

As efforts were underway to revive the nuclear agreement, the US decided to stall the negotiations on the grounds that Iran is allegedly exercising measures of repression on protesters.

But Iranian authorities found that networks of protesters were in fact financed by several western countries to fulfill imperialist aspirations of implementing regime change in the country.