TEHRAN, Iran (AFP) – Negotiations to revive Iran’s nuclear deal, which have been stalled for three months, will resume within days, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Saturday during a surprise visit to Tehran.
“We will resume JCPOA negotiations in the coming days … I mean quickly, immediately,” Borrell told a news conference in the Iranian capital, citing the Joint Comprehensive Action Plan.
Borrell made the announcement after a two-hour meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdolahyan on the second day of an unannounced visit to the Islamic Republic.
Amir-Abdolahyan confirmed the resumption of talks.
“We had a long but positive conversation about global cooperation between Iran and the EU,” Amir-Abdolahyan said. “We will try to resolve the problems and differences through negotiations, which will resume soon.
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The nuclear deal with Iran has been hanging in the balance since 2018, when then-US President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the agreement and began imposing crippling economic sanctions on America’s sworn enemy.
Robert Mali, Biden’s administration special envoy for Iran, testified for the JCPOA during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Capitol Hill, May 25, 2022, in Washington, DC. (Brendan Smyalowski / AFP)
Israel vehemently opposes a return to the 2015 agreement, which it campaigned against when it was signed, viewing Iran as unreliable and incapable of meeting its commitments.
Successive Israeli governments have warned for decades that Iran is seeking to develop a nuclear weapon.
The administration of incumbent US President Joe Biden has tried to return to the agreement, saying it would be the best way to go with the Islamic Republic.
Negotiations began in April last year, but stalled in March amid differences between Tehran and Washington, in particular over Iran’s request to remove its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from the US list of terrorism.
“Meaningful diplomacy”
On the eve of Borrell’s trip, US President Iranian Robert Mali “reaffirmed the US commitment to return to the deal” during a dinner with EU diplomat, according to EU negotiating coordinator Enrique Mora.
“We remain committed to meaningful diplomacy, in consultation with our European partners,” Mali tweeted.
France, one of the six world powers that agreed to the 2015 agreement, on Friday called on Iran to “seize this diplomatic opportunity to end now, while it is still possible.”
Amir-Abdolahyan said on Thursday that Iran was “serious” about reaching an agreement, while calling for “American realism”.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdolahyan speaks at the 51st Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum, WEF, in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday, May 26, 2022 (Laurent Gillieron / Keystone via AP)
The nuclear deal, reached with six major powers – Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States – gave Iran a waiver of sanctions in exchange for guarantees that it could not build a nuclear weapon.
Iran has always denied wanting a nuclear arsenal.
The cameras have been removed
In April, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said the United States still believed that a return to the agreement was “the best way to address Iran’s nuclear challenge.”
Blinken warned at the time that the “breakthrough time” for Iran to develop a nuclear bomb, if it wished, was “within a few weeks” after the deal pushed it out for more than a year.
The Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency adopted a resolution this month condemning Iran for failing to adequately explain the previous discovery of traces of enriched uranium at three sites that Tehran has not declared to host nuclear activities.
On the same day, June 8, Tehran said it had turned off several IAEA cameras that monitored its nuclear facilities.
Illustrative: Photographers and television operators watch a demonstration of a surveillance camera used in Iran during a press conference by Rafael Grossi, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on the current situation in Iran at the agency’s headquarters in Vienna, Austria on 09 June 2022 (Joe Clamar / AFP)
IAEA chief Rafael Grossi later confirmed that 27 cameras had been turned off, leaving about 40 still in place.
Iran’s move, he warned, could deal a “fatal blow” to the talks, unless UN nuclear inspectors are given access within three to four weeks.
Borel’s visit, his first to Tehran in February 2020, could be a determining factor in the fate of the deal.
During talks in Vienna aimed at reviving the agreement, Iran has repeatedly called for assurances from the Biden administration that Trump’s withdrawal will not be repeated.
Meanwhile, tensions between Israel and Iran have escalated in recent weeks following the assassination of a senior Iranian officer in Tehran last month, which he blames on Israel and a number of other deaths of security officials and scientists in Iran.
CNN reported last week that Israel had kept the United States in the dark about its covert operations, including targeted killings and sabotage of Iran’s nuclear program.
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