Indirect negotiations between Iran and the United States to save the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement resumed on Monday (December 27). Tehran will focus on the party to the original transaction and lift sanctions on it, despite its control of its atomic activities. Little progress has been made.
The seventh round of talks was the first round of talks under the leadership of Iran’s new hardline president Ebrahim Raisi. It ended 10 days ago after adding some new Iranian requirements to the working text. Western powers say progress is too slow, and negotiators have “weeks instead of months” before the 2015 deal becomes meaningless.
The agreement left little, and the agreement lifted sanctions on Tehran in exchange for restrictions on its atomic activities. The then President Donald Trump let Washington withdraw in 2018 and re-imposed US sanctions. Iran later violated many of the agreement’s nuclear restrictions and continued to go far beyond them.
“If we work hard in the next few days and weeks, we should achieve positive results… It will be very difficult, it will be very difficult. Both Tehran and Washington must do Difficult political decisions,” Enrique Mora, the negotiating coordinator and EU envoy, said at a press conference.
He made the remarks shortly after the remaining parties to the agreement-Iran, Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom, Germany and the European Union-officially launched the round of negotiations on Monday night.
“All delegations have a sense of urgency and believe that negotiations must be completed within a relatively reasonable time. Again, I will not set limits, but we are talking about weeks, not months,” Mora said.
Iran refuses to meet with U.S. officials directly, which means that other parties must shuttle between the two sides. The United States has repeatedly expressed disappointment with this form, saying it has slowed down the process, and Western officials still suspect that Iran is just playing with time.
The 2015 agreement extended the time required for Iran to manufacture the fissile material needed for a nuclear bomb from approximately two to three months to at least one year. Most experts say that the time is shorter than before the agreement, although Iran has stated that it only wants to master civilian nuclear technology.
SecondEnd of the road
The Iranian media quoted Foreign Minister Hussein Amirabdulahian as saying: “The most important issue for us is that, first of all, Iranian oil can be sold easily and unhindered.”
However, Mora said it would discuss lifting sanctions and Iran’s nuclear restrictions.
Iran insists that all US sanctions must be lifted before nuclear measures are taken, while Western negotiators have stated that nuclear measures and sanctions must be balanced.
U.S. sanctions have reduced Iran’s oil exports, which are its main source of income. Tehran did not disclose the data, but according to the assessment of shipping and other sources, the output dropped from about 2.8 million barrels per day in 2018 to 200,000 barrels per day. A survey showed that the export volume in June was 600,000 barrels per day.
Mora said he decided to reconvene the talks during the holidays of many officials between Christmas and New Year so as not to delay time, but he added that the talks will be suspended for three days on Friday, “because the facilities will be unavailable,” he said. It is a luxury hotel where most conferences are held.
When the seventh round ended, some of Iran’s requirements were included. Negotiators from France, the United Kingdom, and Germany said in a statement: “This will only bring us closer to the state of the negotiations in June”, that is, at the end of the previous round. .
They added: “We are quickly approaching the end of the negotiations.”
