Parties to Iran nuke deal meet in Vienna

Signatories of the Iran nuclear deal met in Vienna in a bid to save the agreement, as Iran warned the deal had been put “in intensive care” by Washington’s dramatic withdrawal earlier this month.

For the first time since the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) came into force in 2015, China, Russia, France, Britain and Germany gathered -at Iran’s request -- without the United States, which pulled out on May 8 and said it would reinstate sanctions.

US President Donald Trump has long trashed the deal with Iran -- concluded under his predecessor Barack Obama -- saying it did not do enough to curtail Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

Speaking after Friday’s meeting, Iranian deputy foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said: “We are negotiating... to see if they can provide us with a package which can give Iran the benefits of sanctions lifting.”

“The next step is to find guarantees for that package,” he said.

“We got the sense that Europeans, Russia and China... are serious and they recognise that JCPOA’s survival depends on the interests of Iran to be respected,” Araghchi went on.

Russian delegate Mikhail Ulyanov struck an upbeat note after the meeting, saying: “We have all chances to succeed, provided that we have the political will.

“I must tell you that the JCPOA is a major international asset. It does not belong to the United States, it belongs to the whole international community.”

He added that the possibility of referring the matter back to the UN “was not discussed during this meeting”.

Unusually for a meeting of the joint commission, IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano was invited to brief the participants on the IAEA’s work in Iran.

According to a report seen by AFP on Thursday, the International Atomic Energy Agency believes Iran is still abiding by the deal’s key restrictions on its nuclear facilities in return for relief from damaging economic sanctions.

VIENNA: