Iran: No Infinite Time for Nuke Deal   01/26 08:15

   

   TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran warned the Biden administration on Tuesday that it 
will not have an indefinite time period to rejoin the 2015 nuclear deal between 
Tehran and world powers.

   Iran also said it expects Washington to swiftly lift crippling economic 
sanctions that former President Donald Trump imposed on the country after 
pulling America out of the atomic accord in 2018, as part of what he called 
maximum pressure against Iran.

   Trump cited Iran's ballistic missile program among other issues in 
withdrawing from the accord. And when the Trump administration increased 
sanctions, Iran gradually and publicly abandoned the deal's limits on its 
nuclear development.

   The remarks Tuesday by Iran's Cabinet spokesman Ali Rabiei are part of 
pressure that Tehran is trying to exert on the U.S. as it seeks to increase its 
leverage and get the Biden administration to quickly return to the deal.

   President Joe Biden has moved swiftly to dismantle Trump's legacy by signing 
a series of executive actions that reverse course on a wide range of issues, 
including climate change and immigration.

   Though Biden has pledged to return to the nuclear deal, Rabiei said there 
has yet to be any communication between Iran and Biden on the subject.

   "The U.S. will not have all the time in the world," Rabiei said. "We are 
waiting for the official announcement of their stance as well as the lifting of 
sanctions."

   In the meantime, he added that Iran would take a step further away from the 
nuclear deal by imposing a "restriction" on inspections by the U.N. nuclear 
watchdog in late February.

   In December, Iran's parliament approved a law under which part of the 
inspections that the deal had provided for would be suspended in February if 
European signatories to the 2015 nuclear deal do not offer relief from oil and 
banking sanctions.

   "The window of opportunity will not be open forever, either for the U.S. or 
the European members of the nuclear deal to fulfill their commitments," Rabiei 
added.

   Tensions between Tehran and Washington have steadily increased. During 
Trump's final days as president, Tehran seized a South Korean oil tanker and 
begun enriching uranium closer to weapons-grade levels, while the U.S. has sent 
B-52 bombers, the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier and a nuclear submarine into the 
region.

   Iran has also increased its military drills, including firing cruise 
missiles as part of a naval drill in the Gulf of Oman this month.

   Iran has missile capability of up to 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles), far 
enough to reach archenemy Israel and U.S. military bases in the region. Last 
January, after the U.S. killed a top Iranian general in Baghdad, Tehran 
retaliated by firing a barrage of ballistic missiles at two Iraqi bases housing 
U.S. troops, resulting in brain concussion injuries to dozens of American 
soldiers.

   In a separate development Tuesday, Iranian state TV said Iran successfully 
tested sophisticated technology for light-based data transfer --- known in 
science as entanglement-based secure quantum cryptography --- at a distance of 
1.6 kilometer (1 mile) in the capital, Tehran. The technology is expected to 
allow for a secure way of sharing secret information between remote users.

   The country's nuclear department chief, Ali Akbar Salehi, said Iranian 
experts embarked on the encryption technology, which only a few in the world 
have mastered so far, in 2018 and hope to use it in satellite communications by 
2025.

   Occasionally Iran announces technological achievements that cannot be 
independently verified.