Iran nuclear talks make room for political cues
VIENNA/TEHERAN — Top diplomats said on Sunday that further progress had been made at talks between Iran and world powers to try to restore a landmark 2015 agreement to contain Iranian nuclear development that was abandoned by the United States. They said it was now up to the governments involved in the negotiations to make political decisions.
The meeting was the first since Ebrahim Raisi, a hardliner and fierce critic of the West, won a landslide victory in the country’s presidential election on Friday.
The European Union on Sunday chaired the final meeting in Vienna of the sixth round of talks between Russia, China, Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Iran.
The nations involved in the negotiations have been trying to resolve the major outstanding issues on how to bring the US back into the nuclear agreement. The US under then-president Donald Trump left the deal in 2018, branding its terms too weak, and reimposed sanctions on the Islamic republic.
Enrique Mora, the EU official who chaired the meeting, told reporters: “We are now closer than ever to an agreement, but bridging the gaps ... requires decisions by the parties.” He added that some issues still need to be resolved.
The US did not have a representative at the table in Vienna. However, President Joe Biden’s administration has signaled its willingness to rejoin the deal under terms that would broadly see the United States scale back sanctions and Iran return to its 2015 nuclear commitments. A US delegation in Vienna is taking part in indirect talks with Iran, with diplomats from the other world powers acting as go-betweens.
For the next few days, negotiations will be stopped and the parties will return to their capitals, not for further consultations but for decision making.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said he had edited the text of a possible deal being discussed in Austria, saying it was getting “cleaner and cleaner”. He said there was a good possibility a deal could be reached before midAugust when the current Iranian administration leaves office.
The final point
Top Russian representative Mikhail Ulyanov said the envoys of the signatories to the 2015 deal, formally called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, “took stock of the significant progress made at the Vienna talks, including at the sixth round, and decided to make a break to allow participants to consult with their capitals in preparation for what is supposed to be the final round of negotiations”.
He added: “I believe we have all chances to arrive at the final point of our negotiations, maybe even by mid-July, unless something extraordinary and negative happens.”
The latest progress came as Iran’s sole nuclear power plant has been temporarily shut down over a “technical fault”, the country’s atomic energy body said in a statement.
The statement said the plant will be reconnected to the grid and the issue will be resolved “in a few days”, but did not elaborate.
Construction on the Bushehr plant, on the coast of the northern reaches of the Persian Gulf, began under Iran’s Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in the mid-1970s. After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the plant was repeatedly targeted in the Iran-Iraq war. Russia later completed construction of the facility.
The plant, which produces 1,000 megawatts of power, was completed by Russia and officially handed over in September 2013. Iran is required to send spent fuel rods from the reactor back to Russia as a nuclear nonproliferation measure.
Bushehr is fueled by uranium produced in Russia, and is monitored by the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency.
In 2016, Russian and Iranian firms began building two additional 1,000megawatt reactors at Bushehr.