Referring to Iran’s three month absence from JCPOA negotiations, Secretary of State Antony Blinken asserted that “the ball remains in their court, but not for long… because of the work that Iran is doing on its nuclear program in violation of the JCPOA – spinning more sophisticated centrifuges, building up stockpiles of uranium enriched to 20 per cent or even 60 per cent – simply getting back to the terms of the JCPOA at some point will not be sufficient to recapture the benefits of the agreement”. He further assessed that “there’s an understanding among the Europeans, among the Russians, among the Chinese that the possibilities of getting back to the JCPOA under its own terms are not indefinite… our hope and expectation is that all of our partner countries in this will prevail upon Iran to quickly return and see if we can still get back to the JCPOA”.