The State Department announced Thursday night that the United States would accept the opportunity to re-enter negotiations with Iran and the six other nations that signed the nuclear accord with Iran during the Obama administration, CNN reports.
“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 spokesperson Ned Price said in a statement Thursday. The P5+1 refers to the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council — China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States — and Germany.
The Trump administration violated the agreement, claiming that Iran was breaking the deal although that the administration itself certified Iran was in compliance with the agreement just a month before pulling out of it. Donald Trump re-initiated sanctions against Iran, which prompted Iran to announce that it would start to enrich uranium at previous levels.
The Biden administration has already lifted some of the more insipid sanctions Trump has levied, including limiting travel for Iranian diplomats attending UN sessions in New York City and barring travel from Iranians seeking medical treatment in the US.
“Essentially this just reverses the last administration’s imposition of additional travel restrictions and returns the domestic travel controls on Iranian representatives back in line with those of several other missions to the UN and that’s just to return to our long standing posture that we’ve had with regard to the domestic travel of Iranian representatives at the UN,” an administration official said.