Rouhani says Iran would rejoin nuclear pact an hour after US does

Iran’s president suggested that Tehran would honor the Obama-era nuclear accord within an hour of the U.S. rejoining the agreement, something President-elect Joe Biden has vowed to do.

The Guardian reported that President Hassan Rouhani said Monday that Iran stood ready to restart the relationship with the U.S. under a Biden administration, but cautioned against any planned changes to the 2015 agreement.

Rouhani also warned the U.S. and European allies of seeking to constrain Iran’s ballistic missile program, the newspaper added.

Biden has repeatedly said he wants to restore the multinational deal with Tehran.  

In September, he wrote in a CNN op-ed that if “Iran returns to strict compliance with the nuclear deal, the United States would rejoin the agreement as a starting point for follow-on negotiations.”

Biden said earlier this month that he stood by those comments.

At a speech in early December, the president-elect warned against the possibility of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East.

“And the last goddamn thing we need in that part of the world is a buildup of nuclear capability,” he said.

The Trump administration exited the Iran nuclear accords in 2017, blaming Iranian officials at the time for not complying with the “spirit” of the deal. European allies have urged Tehran to remain within the deal’s parameters even though the U.S. backed out and reinstituted crippling sanctions on Iran.

Iran has blamed the U.S. sanctions for its continued economic woes, including its difficulty in obtaining medical supplies to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, which has claimed more than 52,000 lives in the country, according to a tracker operated by Johns Hopkins University.