State Department made ‘calculation’ to prioritize Iran nuclear deal over human rights issues

UNITED NATIONS, New York – The Biden administration decided to pursue a nuclear deal with Iran in hopes of stopping the nation from attaining the bomb, even at the cost of overlooking the regime’s humans rights violations.

“We’ve been focused … to do everything we can to permanently and to verifiably see to it that Iran is never able to acquire a nuclear weapon,” State Department Spokesman Ned Price told Fox News Digital, Tuesday. “That’s a commitment that President Biden has made, and it’s a calculation that not only the State Department has made, but the international community and our own intelligence community has determined that, at least for now, the JCPOA … is the most effective means by which to permanently and verifiably ensure that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon.” 

Secretary of State Antony Blinken earlier this month said that hopes of a nuclear deal have once again stalled as negotiations took a “backwards” step. He told reporters at NATO headquarters in Belgium that he was not going to “negotiate anything in public,” and that despite the fact that both sides had “closed some gaps,” Iran had not yet met “bottom-line requirements” for the deal. 

At the same time, tensions in Iran have hit boiling point following the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who died while in the custody of Iran’s morality police for alleged violations of the hijab (headscarf) rules. The police rejected responsibility for Amini’s death, claiming she fell into a coma, but her family and witnesses say they found evidence upon her arrival at hospital that she had been beaten. 

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Demonstrations overnight following Amini’s funeral led to the deaths of at least five protestors as they demanded an end to the morality police. 

Price said that Amini “should be alive today,” but stressed that the State Department views Iran’s nuclear potential as an overriding threat. 

“We are doing everything we can not only to support the human rights and the aspirations for greater freedom of the Iranian people, but also to hold accountable those within the Iranian system that are responsible for … violence against…