On Saturday, President Biden will attend the first session of the G20, on economics and health session.
While there, Biden will have a meeting on Iran with Germany, France, and the UK. The outgoing German Chancellor Merkel, French President Macron, and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson will touch base with Biden on where things stand concerning an attempt to resume negotiations for a return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), known as the Iran Nuclear Deal.
On Thursday, during the White House press briefing, Jake O’Sullivan said that during Saturday’s meeting at G20, Biden and E3 leaders will have an opportunity to “level-set on our understanding of Iran’s progress on the nuclear program since they left the JCPOA.” He added that the United States has “deep concerns about the forward progress of that program since the lid was lifted and they began to operate outside of the constraints of the JCPOA.”
Biden is also planning to talk about the European and American shared concerns about the state of play with Iran’s nuclear program.
Speaking about the expectations for tomorrow’s meeting on Iran, a senior administration official stressed that “this is not a meeting for a deliverable.”
A senior administration official said that he thinks there will be a statement out of the meeting “which will send a good public signal” about the unity of E-3. “But the main purpose for them getting together— and this was actually a Merkel initiative— is we’re at a critical moment and these four leaders have not actually had a chance to sit and talk about that,” senior administration official revealed. E-3 leaders “need to have private space to have a No BS conversation about where we’re at and where we need to go.”
Tomorrow’s meeting aims to be “a serious opportunity to check signals as we head into a really vital period on this issue,” a senior administration official concluded.
President Biden is currently in Europe on his second foreign trip since he became the president of the United States. On Monday, he will head off to Glasgow for COP26 in the United Kingdom.