TEHRAN, Iran (AFP) – Talks on reactivating the nuclear deal with Iran, which have been stalled for three months, will resume in a few days, the country’s foreign policy chief said on Saturday. EU, Josep Borrell, during a surprise visit to Tehran.
“We will resume talks on the JCPOA in the coming days … I mean quickly, immediately,” Borrell said at a news conference in the Iranian capital, referring to the Joint Comprehensive Action Plan.
Borrell made the announcement after a two-hour meeting with Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian on the second day of an unannounced visit to the Islamic Republic.
Amir-Abdollahian confirmed the resumption of negotiations.
“We have had a long but positive conversation about global cooperation between Iran and the EU,” Amir-Abdollahian said. “We will try to resolve the issues and differences through negotiations that will resume soon.”
Get the daily edition of The Times of Israel by email and never miss our main stories
By registering, you accept the conditions
The nuclear deal with Iran has been pending a thread since 2018, when then-US President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the deal and began imposing crippling economic sanctions on the archenemy of the United States. United States.
Robert Malley, the Biden administration’s special envoy for Iran, testified about the JCPOA during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Capitol Hill on May 25, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Brendan Smialowski / AFP)
Israel is fiercely opposed to a return to the 2015 agreement, against which it campaigned at the time of its signing, considering Iran unreliable and unable to meet its commitments.
Successive Israeli governments have warned for decades that Iran is looking to build a nuclear weapon.
The administration of the current president of the United States, Joe Biden, has tried to return to the agreement, saying that it would be the best way with the Islamic Republic.
Talks began in April last year, but stalled in March amid differences between Tehran and Washington, mostly over Iran’s demand to withdraw its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from a list. terrorist of the United States.
“Significant diplomacy”
On the eve of Borrell’s trip, US President Robert Malley had “reiterated the US commitment to return to the agreement” during a meal with the EU’s diplomatic chief, according to the coordinator of the EU for talks, Enrique Mora.
“We remain committed to the path of meaningful diplomacy, in consultation with our European partners,” Malley said in a tweet.
France, one of the six world powers that accepted the 2015 deal, had called on Iran on Friday to “take this diplomatic opportunity to conclude now, while this is still possible.”
Amir-Abdollahian said Thursday that Iran was “serious” in reaching an agreement while calling for “realism from the US side.”
Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian 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) relieved Iran of sanctions in exchange for guarantees that it could not develop an atomic weapon.
Iran has always denied wanting a nuclear arsenal.
The cameras have been removed
In April, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States still believed that a return to the agreement was “the best way to meet the nuclear challenge posed by Iran.”
Blinken then warned that the “explosion time” for Iran to develop a nuclear bomb if it so wished was reduced “within a matter of weeks” after the agreement pushed it beyond a year.
The governing body of the International Atomic Energy Agency adopted a resolution this month censoring Iran for failing to adequately explain the previous discovery of uranium-enriched remains at three sites that Tehran had not declared host activities. nuclear.
On the same day, June 8, Tehran said it had disconnected several IAEA cameras that had been monitoring its nuclear sites.
Illustrative: Photographers and television camera see a demonstration of a monitoring 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 June 9, 2022. (Joe Klamar / AFP)
The head of the IAEA, Rafael Grossi, later confirmed that 27 cameras had been disconnected, leaving about 40 still in place.
Iran’s move, he warned, could be a “fatal blow” to negotiations unless inspectors from the UN nuclear control body have access within three to four weeks.
Borrell’s visit, his first to Tehran since February 2020, could be a determining factor in the fate of the agreement.
During talks in Vienna to reactivate the deal, Iran has repeatedly called for assurances from the Biden administration that the Trump withdrawal will not be repeated.
Meanwhile, tensions between Israel and Iran have intensified in recent weeks, following the assassination of a senior Iranian official in Tehran last month blaming Israel and other deaths for scientific and security personnel. 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 against Iran’s nuclear program.
You are a dedicated reader
We are very happy to have read articles from the X Times of Israel over the last month.
That’s why we started the Times of Israel ten years ago, to offer demanding readers like you mandatory coverage of Israel and the Jewish world.
So now we have a request. Unlike other media, we have not created any payment wall. But because the journalism we do is expensive, we invite readers for whom The Times of Israel has become important in helping us support our work by joining The Times of Israel community.
For just $ 6 a month you can help support our quality journalism while enjoying The Times of Israel WITHOUT ADVERTISING, as well as access to exclusive content available only to members of the Times of Israel community.
Thank you, David Horovitz, founding editor of The Times of Israel
Join our community Join our community Already a member? Sign in to stop seeing this