Referring to the Vienna talks, a senior U.S. diplomat remarked that “if Iran makes the political decision that it genuinely wants to return to the JCPOA as the JCPOA was negotiated, then it could be done relatively quickly and implementation could be relatively swift. But we don’t know if Iran has made that decision”. He further asserted that “if Iran is not prepared to do that, the Biden administration will… do everything it can to make sure that Iran does not acquire nuclear weapons. So we’re prepared for that scenario as well. But the scenario that we prefer, that we know is in our interest and we believe is in Iran’s interest, is to come back into mutual compliance”. On sanctions, the official remarked that “what is inconsistent with the deal we’ll have to remove, and what is consistent with the deal we will not… our national security determination is that it is in our country’s national security interest to return and to comply to the JCPOA if Iran returns to compliance”. The official also indicated that “there are things that the U.S. didn’t get in the deal that it would hope can be discussed, and I think that Iran clearly didn’t get in the deal… we’re prepared to sit down immediately after we have reached an understanding on rejoining the JCPOA and Iran coming back into compliance to talk about how we could strengthen the deal to our mutual benefit”.