nuclear negotiations resume, Tehran “determined” to reach agreement

Back to the discussion table. After a five-month break, Iranian nuclear negotiators met on Monday, November 29 in Vienna (Austria). “The delegation of the Islamic Republic of Iran is in Vienna with the firm determination to reach an agreement”Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Said Khatibzadeh told reporters. The meeting began at 3 p.m. French time, at the same location where the 2015 international agreement was concluded.

Last June, the various parties parted on a positive note, but the coming to power in Iran of ultra-conservative President Ebrahim Raïssi had changed the situation. For months, the new leadership team ignored Westerners’ call to return to the table, while continuing to ramp up the nuclear program. Tehran now insists on “the lifting of all sanctions, in a guaranteed and verifiable manner”. The European Union, for its part, has judged “crucial to pick up where we left off and work to get the agreement back on track as soon as possible”.

In front of an Iranian delegation for this seventh round since the start of the talks in April, took place the diplomats of the other states involved (Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China), while the United States of Joe Biden participate indirectly. Before his arrival in Austria, the American envoy Rob Malley had judged that the recent Iranian acts were not “no good omen”. And to add: “if they are dragging their feet (…), then, of course, we would not be ready to sit idly by”.

From Paris, Emmanuel Macron once again called on Iran to engage “constructively” in these negotiations. The goal “was to see Iran return to full compliance with all of its JCPOA commitments and the United States to return to the agreement”, specified the Elysee, using the English acronym of the nuclear agreement signed in 2015 and that the United States left in 2018.