United States President Joe Biden on Sunday said that he will not lift the economic sanctions imposed on Iran until it complies with the terms of the 2015 nuclear deal, CBS reported.

Biden is seeking to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, from which his predecessor Donald Trump had withdrawn in 2018. Trump re-imposed crippling sanctions on Iran, after which Tehran also breached key limits of the deal.

During an interview, CBS news anchor Norah O’Donnell asked Biden if the US will lift the sanctions on Iran first to get it back to the negotiating table. Biden responded with a clear “no”.

The US president just nodded when the anchor asked him if Iran had to stop enriching uranium first.

An unidentified senior official told Reuters that what Biden meant was that Iran had to stop enriching uranium beyond the nuclear deal’s limits before the two sides begin negotiations again. “There is nothing changed in the US position,” the official added. “The United States wants Iran to come back into [compliance with] its JCPOA commitments and if it does, the United States will do the same.”

Meanwhile, Iran took a completely opposite stand. Iran’s Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that Tehran will go back to complying with the terms of the 2015 deal only if the US lifted the sanctions imposed on it.

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“Iran has fulfilled all its obligations under the deal, not the United States and the three European countries,” Khamenei was quoted as saying by Reuters. “If they want Iran to return to its commitments, the United States must in practice lift all sanctions.”

Khamenei added: “Then, after verifying whether all sanctions have been lifted correctly, we will return to full compliance. It is the irreversible and final decision and all Iranian officials have consensus over it.”

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, signed by the five permanent members of the United Nations, Germany, the European Union and Iran, had lifted decades-old sanctions on Tehran on the promise that it would tone down its nuclear programme considerably.

After the US withdrawal from the deal, Iran breached the 3.67% limit on uranium enrichment in 2019. In January 2021, the country resumed enrichining the element to 20% purity, BBC reported.