Iran’s indirect talks with the US on reviving the 2015 nuclear deal will resume soon, according to the Iranian foreign minister.
Reuters reports Hossein Amirabdollahian as announcing the planned talks on Saturday amid a push by the European Union’s top diplomat to break a months-long impasse in the negotiations.
“We are prepared to resume talks in the coming days. What is important for Iran is to fully receive the economic benefits of the 2015 accord,” Minister Amirabdollahian said, adding that he had held a “long but positive meeting” with EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell.
White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said he could not speak on the status of the negotiations. “But there’s nothing changed about our position that a nuclear deal is the best way to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear weapons status,” Mr Kirby told reporters traveling aboard Air Force One. “We want to get them back into compliance.”
The pact appeared close to being revived in March when the EU – which is coordinating negotiations – invited foreign ministers representing the accord’s parties to Vienna to finalise an agreement after 11 months of indirect talks between Tehran and President Joe Biden’s administration.
But the talks have since been bogged down, chiefly over Tehran’s insistence that Washington remove the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), its elite security force, from the US Foreign Terrorist Organisation list.
“We are expected to resume talks in the coming days and break the impasse. It has been three months and we need to accelerate the work. I am very happy about the decision that has been made in Tehran and Washington,” Mr Borrell told a televised news conference.
In 2018, then-U.S. President Donald Trump pulled out of the deal, under which Iran agreed to curbs on its nuclear programme in return for relief from economic sanctions.
The US withdrawal and its reimposition of crippling sanctions prompted Iran to begin violating its core nuclear limits about a year later.
A recent Reuters report says Western powers fear Iran is getting closer to being able to produce a nuclear bomb if it decided to, though Tehran says its intentions are entirely peaceful.