The British magazine, The Economist, said that talks between the United States and Iran to revive the nuclear agreement - which the two parties reached in 2015 and Washington withdrew from it after 3 years - are going badly, and this opens the door wide to bleak alternatives and threatens to happen. A new crisis between the two countries.

And the magazine stated - in a report - that Iran complicated the task of US President Joe Biden to return to the agreement, as it refused to speak directly to US officials in the six rounds of the Vienna talks that ended last June, and instead negotiated through European, Russian and Chinese mediators.

Tehran has also slowed the pace of negotiations since then, especially after the presidential elections that brought "hard-line" President Ibrahim Raisi to power, and it has invoked the need to appoint ministers and a new negotiating team, declaring that nuclear negotiations will not resume until next November.

In what appear to be "cynical steps" on Washington - the magazine adds - Tehran has escalated its nuclear activities, as it announced on the ninth of this month that it had produced more than 120 kilograms of 20% enriched uranium, a quantity significantly more than the 84 kilograms reported. It was reported by United Nations inspectors last month and is close to the 170 kilograms needed to make a nuclear bomb after further enrichment.

This accelerated rate of enrichment was aided by Tehran's introduction into service of more advanced centrifuges to purify fissile material.

There are other worrying developments - adds The Economist - including the conversion of enriched uranium hexafluoride gas into uranium metal, which is often used in the manufacture of nuclear bombs, as well as the Iranian authorities' obstruction of inspections carried out by the International Atomic Energy Agency of the United Nations.

According to the British magazine, the "breakout time", i.e. the time Iran would need to make a single HEU bomb, has shrunk to just about a month, estimates David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, D.C. When US officials estimate it at "a few months", which in both cases is much shorter than the year or more that the world enjoyed when the nuclear deal went into effect (and it might require another two years to install a nuclear warhead on a missile).

The British magazine confirms that the looming crisis between Washington and Tehran was expected from the first day that former President Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement, describing it as "the worst deal ever."

The agreement restricted Iran's nuclear activities in exchange for the lifting of many - but not all - international economic sanctions, followed by the imposition of a barrage of sanctions by the Trump administration as part of its "maximum pressure" policy that proved to be unsuccessful, and did not succeed in forcing Iran to accept tougher terms. Nor should it stop developing its ballistic missiles, nor stop its support for the militias loyal to it in the region.

The Economist concludes that President Biden launched his campaign against Iran with a promise to restore the agreement, but his administration retained most of the sanctions imposed by his predecessor Trump in the hope of preserving Washington's ability and negotiating power, but with the acceleration of Iran's nuclear program, Tehran is now the one practicing the policy of maximum pressure, not the United States As Mark Fitzpatrick of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London confirms.