On Thursday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said that the Biden Administration was prepared to “turn to other options” if diplomacy failed in preventing the advancement of Iran’s nuclear program.
“President Biden is committed to ensuring Iran never acquires a nuclear weapon and believes diplomacy, in coordination with allies and regional partners, is the best path to achieve that goal,” Psaki claimed. “We believe a diplomatic resolution offers the best path to avoiding a nuclear crisis. However, given the ongoing advances in Iran’s nuclear program, the President has asked his team to be prepared in the event that diplomacy fails and we must turn to other options, and that requires preparations.”
“If diplomacy cannot get on track soon, and if Iran’s nuclear program continues to accelerate, then we will have no choice but to take additional measures to further restrict Iran’s revenue-producing sectors,” she continued.
Psaki later added that the Biden administration has “presented a diplomatic path forward; that path is still open. But based on the outcome of the last round of talks and the ongoing advancements in Iran’s nuclear facilities, we are laying the path for — the groundwork for another path entirely. So, it’s just meant to be preparations.”
The Biden administration is still hoping to return to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), also called the Iran nuclear deal, which consisted of the United States paying Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, to temporarily reduce their nuclear activity.
“A nuclear agreement with Iran is again on the table, but history has taught us that agreements like this with extremist regimes are worth as much as garlic peel,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned earlier this year. “To our best friends I say – an agreement with Iran which paves its way to nuclear weapons that threaten us with destruction – an agreement like this will not bind us.”
