US ready to embark on ‘prolonged path’ back to Iran nuclear deal

President Biden’s administration has opened the door to a direct meeting with Iranian officials in a bid to halt the intensifying standoff over the regime’s nuclear program and eventually restore the 2015 nuclear deal scrapped by former President Donald Trump’s team. 

“The United States would accept an invitation from the European Union High Representative to attend a meeting of the P5+1 and Iran to discuss a diplomatic way forward on Iran’s nuclear program,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a Thursday announcement. 

That statement raises the likelihood of a meeting between the U.S. and the other signatories to the 2015 deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Trump exited the pact and renewed U.S. economic sanctions that Iran hawks on his team hoped would force Tehran to accept tighter constraints on the regime’s nuclear program and roll back its other aggressive operations in the Middle East, but Biden and European allies regard the nuclear agreement as a mechanism to defuse a near-term nuclear crisis in the Middle East.