Secretary of State Antony Blinken remarked that “we’re not talking about a nuclear agreement [with Iran]. We are very clearly making it known to them that they need to take actions to de-escalate, not escalate, the tensions that exist in our relationship across a whole variety of fronts.  We’ll look to see if they do that”. He further asserted: “To the best of our judgment and that of many others, they have not pursued [weaponisation] work in a number of years. If they were to restart that part of the program, too, and these two things came together, then it would become an even more urgent problem. But we are working across a whole series of lines of effort to push back on them, to make sure we have a strong deterrent, to make sure we have the appropriate pressure, and then to see if we get back to an opportunity where we can work on a nuclear deal”.