VIENNA — Iran and
world powers will meet on Friday after their experts flesh out concrete plans
on how the United States would lift sanctions and Iran return to its
obligations, as part of indirect talks aimed at reviving the 2015 nuclear deal.
اضافة اعلان
European
intermediaries have started shuttling between Iranian and US officials in
Vienna as they seek to bring both countries back into full compliance with the
accord that Washington abandoned three years ago, diplomats said.
The 2015 deal lifted
sanctions on Iran in return for curbs to its nuclear program. Then-president
Donald Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018, prompting Iran to steadily
overstep the accord’s limits.
While new President
Joe Biden aims to restore the agreement, each side wants the other to act
first. Tehran has rejected direct negotiations, and Washington said on Monday
it expected the discussions to be difficult.
Even without
face-to-face talks, however, the presence of both Iran and the United States in
the same location marks a step forward.
British, French, and
German officials will shuttle between the American and Iranian delegations,
based in separate Viennese hotels five minutes away from each other. Russia and
China, as fellow parties of the deal, are also present.
Two expert-level
groups have been given the task of marrying lists of sanctions that the United
States could lift with nuclear obligations Iran should meet, and reporting back
on Friday.
“This is going to
involve discussions about identifying the steps that the US has to take and
identifying the steps that Iran is going to have to take,” Robert Malley, head
of the US delegation, which also includes sanctions expert Richard Nephew, told
NPR radio on Tuesday morning.
Iran briefly met at a
hotel for preparatory talks with the five other parties to the deal — but
without the Americans.
“Constructive Joint
Commission meeting. There’s unity and ambition for a joint diplomatic process
with two expert groups on nuclear implementation and sanctions lifting. As
Coordinator I will intensify separate contacts here in Vienna with all relevant
parties, including US,” European Union chief coordinator Enrique Mora said on
Twitter.
Iran’s chief nuclear
negotiator Abbas Araqchi echoed those comments adding that senior diplomats
would meet again on Friday.
Russia’s envoy to the
International Atomic Energy Agency, Mikhail Ulyanov, tweeted that the
restoration of the deal “will not happen immediately. It will take some time.
How long? Nobody knows. The most important thing after today’s meeting of the
Joint Commission is that practical work towards achieving this goal has started.”
Majid Takht-Ravanchi,
Iran’s envoy to the UN put the onus on Washington. “The US has so far failed to
honor @POTUS campaign promise to rejoin the JCPOA. So this opportunity
shouldn’t be wasted,” he said on Twitter, referring to the nuclear deal by an
acronym. “If US lifts all sanctions, Iran will then cease all remedial
measures.”
Iranian Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on all state matters, has
demanded sanctions be lifted all at once and rejected proposals that would lift
them gradually.
Araqchi said Tehran
had rejected a US proposal for Iran to suspend its enrichment of uranium to 20
percent fissile purity in return for the release of $1 billion of its funds
blocked in other countries amid the US sanctions.
Diplomats said the
talks would spread over several weeks.
The objective is some
form of an accord ahead of June’s Iranian presidential election, an EU official
said, although Iranian and US officials have said there is no rush.
The Biden
administration has also said it wants to build a “longer and stronger
agreement” that would deal with other issues, including Iran’s long-term
nuclear program, its development of ballistic missiles, and its support for
proxy forces across the Middle East.
Iran has repeatedly
refused to negotiate a broader deal.
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