A senior military aide to Iran’s supreme leader said on Thursday he believed the United States would eventually capitulate and rejoin Tehran’s tattered 2015 nuclear deal.

“My prediction is that the United States will give in and join the JCPOA,” said Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi, using the acronym of the agreement’s official name, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

“Today we make the decisions, and Americans have to listen,” Safavi was quoted as saying by the semi-official ISNA news agency.

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The United States and Iran have been engaged in indirect talks in Vienna for more than a year aimed at reviving the 2015 deal, which offered Iran sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program. .

Talks have stalled since March, reportedly over an Iranian request to remove the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) from the US Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) list. The United States had designated the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization under former President Donald Trump in 2019.

Trump withdrew Washington from the deal in 2018 and reimposed sweeping sanctions on Tehran, saying the deal did not address Iran’s ballistic missile program and regional activities and did not block the way of Iran towards a nuclear weapon.

Iran, which insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only, has responded by expanding its nuclear program, violating most of the accord’s restrictions.

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