(JNS) The United States and Iran have been engaged in indirect diplomacy in an effort to revive the 2015 nuclear deal, White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said on Friday. “Diplomacy with Iran is ongoing, just not in a direct fashion at the moment,” he said, reported Reuters. “There are communications through the Europeans and through others that enable us to explain to the Iranians what our position is with respect to the compliance-for-compliance approach, and to hear what their position is.” Former President Donald Trump withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in May 2018, while imposing and increasing previous sanctions. President Joe Biden is seeking to renew talks, but Iran has been demanding the removal of all sanctions as a precondition. “We are waiting at this point to hear further from the Iranians how they would like to proceed,” said Sullivan, according to the report. “This is not going to be easy, but we believe that we are in a diplomatic process now that we can move forward on, and ultimately secure our objective, which is to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon and to do so through diplomacy.”

 sequencing the entire virus genome, a process that is expensive and time-consuming. The new test is based on the gene deletion that differentiates the South African or British strains of the virus from the original SARS-CoV-2. The researchers tried their test on sewage samples from Beersheva, in which they detected the British variant but not the South African one –results that corresponded with the variants that were prevalent in Israel at the time.

Their findings were published in the MedRxiv preprint digital archive. The researchers note that each test is applicable only for a specific variant. They are now developing tests for additional strains.

Main Photo: U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. Source: Screenshot.