Iran said on Wednesday (October 27) that in the face of increasing warnings that international patience is exhausting, after a five-month suspension, it will resume negotiations with the world’s major powers in November to resume nuclear agreements.
Iran held six rounds of indirect negotiations in Vienna with the administration of President Joe Biden on the return to the 2015 agreement in Vienna, but the negotiations were suspended in June as a new hardline government took office in Tehran.
During a visit to Brussels, Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani said that he had seen progress in the talks with EU mediator Enrique Mora, who also spoke earlier this month. Go to Tehran.
“We agreed to start negotiations before the end of November. The exact date will be announced next week,” Bagheri, who is Tehran’s chief negotiator, wrote on Twitter.
He said that he and Mora had “conducted a very serious and constructive dialogue on the basic elements of successful negotiations.”
Since former U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew and imposed comprehensive sanctions in May 2018, the agreement reached between Iran and six world powers seeking a long-term solution to its controversial nuclear program crisis has been dying.
His successor, Biden, said that as long as Iran resumes full compliance with the agreement by reducing its nuclear activities in response to Trump’s sanctions, he is ready to rejoin the agreement.
The United States is cautious about Iran’s statement, but expressed its belief that after the sixth round of talks in Vienna, only “a few issues” remain unresolved.
A spokesperson for the State Department said: “We are ready to return to Vienna, and we believe it is still possible to quickly reach and implement an understanding to restore full mutual compliance.”
“We are also very clear that as Iran continues to take provocative nuclear measures, this window will not remain open forever, so we hope that they will come to Vienna for quick and sincere negotiations.”
Another issue will be the access of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN nuclear watchdog agency, whose head Rafael Grossi reached a short-term compromise through negotiations during his visit to Iran on September 12.
More and more warnings
Iran says it will take time after the election of President Ebrahim Raisi. This hardliner succeeded the more moderate Hassan Rouhani, who had previously worked with Barack Obama (Barack Obama). ) The government negotiated and reached an agreement, hoping to alleviate Iran’s international isolation.
But the prolonged delay caused panic—even among European powers that criticized Trump’s withdrawal from the agreement.
During a visit to Washington in early October, Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid warned of military action against his country’s mortal enemy, Iran.
There is widespread suspicion that Israel was involved in Iran’s sabotage, including the killing of nuclear scientists. On Tuesday, Iran accused a cyber attack of destroying its civilian fuel distribution network.
Secretary of State Anthony Brinken said that he supports diplomacy, but also said that if the negotiations are fruitless, the United States has “other options.”
After meeting with European and Arab allies, Rob Marley, the US negotiator on Iran, said in a speech on Monday that the Biden administration will always be open to diplomacy, but the agreement, officially called JCPOA, has a shelf life.
“This is not a chronological clock; this is a technical clock. At some point, the JCPOA will be so eroded because Iran will make irreversible progress,” Marley told reporters.
Marley refuted the criticism that the negotiations had not made progress, saying that there was a broad understanding of most issues in Vienna—European mediators shuttled between hotels because Iran refused to meet directly with the United States.
Iran expressed its hope that the sanctions would be lifted in full, but the Biden team stated that the only sanctions on the table are those imposed by Trump on Iran’s nuclear work.
Trump argued that the JCPOA did not resolve other issues with Iran, such as its support for militants fighting US allies Israel and Saudi Arabia, and vowed to bring Tehran to its knees through economic pressure.
