“If it is in our best interests, the US will agree to the Iran deal,” White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre told a media conference on Thursday as efforts to revive the nuclear agreement with the global powers appeared to go forth again.
The White House’s latest response to the negotiations around Iran forced Brent crude to settle down $1.88, or 1.9%, at $99.34 per barrel as the London-traded global benchmark for oil gave up its tenuous hold in the $100 territory it had occupied for just two days. Prior to Thursday’s slide, Brent reached as high as $102.45 over the past week, rallying in five sessions out of six, after hitting a low of 91.71 on Aug. 16.
New York-traded West Texas Intermediate (WTI), the benchmark for US crude, settled down $2.31, or 2.4%, at $92.52 per barrel. Like Brent, WTI had risen in five of the past six sessions, climbing from a six-and-a-half month low of $85.73 on August 16 to $95.73 earlier on Thursday.
“Granted that there’s been a lot of back-and-forth on Iran over the 20 months of this administration and even now, there’s no guarantee that the deal will be restored,” John Kilduff, founding partner at New York energy hedge fund Again Capital, said. “But the latest noises on this that have emerged from both the White House and Tehran have been positive, and that’s a negative for oil prices if it means having what could be a ballpark figure of some million additional barrels per day landing on the market.”
Prior to the White House’s comment on Thursday, the State Department said the United States has conveyed its official response to the European Union’s proposal to salvage the seven-year-old nuclear agreement.
Iran also confirmed that it had received the US response.
“The careful study of the views of the American side has started and Iran will share its comments with the coordinator upon completion of the review,” a spokesperson for Iran Foreign Minister Nasser Kanaani said.
The nuclear agreement, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), is critical to ending US sanctions on Iranian oil exports and allowing Tehran's legitimate return to the export market for oil.
Talks between Iran and the global powers, led by the EU, have dragged on for 20 months since President Joe Biden entered office. Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump was the one who canceled the 2015 agreement in 2018, putting sanctions on Iran.
Lately, Iran has made several concessions to try and get the deal revived.
On Monday, Iran dropped its demand for the lifting of the terrorism designation that the United States had placed on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which has been blamed for terror acts around the world. The demand has been one of Iran’s sticking points that have held up the reinstatement of the 2015 nuclear agreement.
On Tuesday, Iran took another step by giving up the block it had placed on the inspection of sites on its territory believed to be linked to uranium enrichment. Tehran had previously wanted the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to close its investigation of undeclared nuclear material found at certain Iranian sites in 2019. Now, Iran was no longer making that demand, a senior Biden administration official said.
In effect, Iran has less to hide from the IAEA amid accusations that the Islamic Republic had amassed enough capacity, including uranium enrichment, at those sites to build an atomic bomb. For the record, Tehran has maintained that its nuclear program was for civil uses and not for making weapons. But Saudi Arabia, Israel and other Iran rivals have repeatedly said they do not believe Tehran's claims.