US diplomacy on Wednesday preferred to highlight the common interests of the United States and China over the issue of Iran’s nuclear program, avoiding denouncing the 25-year “strategic cooperation” agreement signed a few days ago by Beijing and Tehran.
The deal was struck on Saturday by conservative US politicians and foreign policy commentators as evidence that a new anti-American axis is emerging.
“We will not comment on specific bilateral talks,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement, which appeared to indicate Joe Biden’s administration’s intention not to add fuel to the fire.
However, he reminded that the US sanctions against the Islamic Republic remain “in force” if they wait for the hypothetical settlement between the two countries, with openly hostile relations for decades, in order to survive the 2015 international agreement on Iran’s nuclear program. , withdrawn from the United States by former President Donald Trump and whose provisions have begun to be violated by Tehran, in protest of the sweeping US sanctions that were re-imposed and further expanded.
“We will deal with any attempt to circumvent these sanctions,” Mr Price said, referring generally to the Iran-China agreement.
“Competition, as you know, determines our relationship with China, but in some cases there are areas for close tactical alignment,” he said. “Iran is one of them. “China has cooperated in its efforts to curb Iran’s nuclear program.”
According to Ned Price, “Beijing has no interest in seeing Iran develop nuclear weapons, which would have a profoundly destabilizing effect on a region on which China depends.”
China is one of the major powers that signed the 2015 agreement, formally the Joint Integrated Action Plan (JAP), along with the United States, Russia, France, the United Kingdom and Germany.
The agreement would theoretically lead to the lifting of international sanctions in exchange for fulfilling various Iranian commitments, but Donald Trump reinstated them in 2018 and then toughened all US sanctions.
Joe Biden promises that his country will return to the agreement, but on the condition that Tehran returns to full compliance with its commitments, which it is no longer fulfilling. Iran, for its part, is demanding that Washington take the first step by lifting sanctions.
For Ned Price, the US and China have a common interest in rescuing the deal as the parties look for ways to achieve it.
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