France urges Iran to resume nuclear talks

Presidency official says delay will lead to diplomatic row and scuttle negotiations

Iran must return to talks with world powers over its 2015 nuclear deal to avoid a diplomatic escalation that could jeopardise the negotiations, a French presidency official said yesterday.

He added that Iran could not set new conditions before returning to the talks in Vienna as the terms were clear.

Indirect talks between Iran and the US on reviving the accord stopped in June before Ebrahim Raisi took office as Iranian president last month.

“Nobody wants an escalation, but to avoid an escalation Iran must return to the negotiating table,” the French official told reporters.

Tehran has signalled in recent weeks that negotiations would resume in a few weeks without giving a specific date, increasing frustration among the Western parties — Britain, France, Germany and the US — to the 2015 accord.

“The more that time passes, the harder it becomes to return to the negotiating table...and the key question of restoring a manageable and acceptable breakout time for us becomes complicated to resolve,” the official said, referring to the time it takes to amass enough fissile material for a single nuclear weapon.

The official said that world powers, including Russia and China, needed to remain united and that Beijing especially needed to “express itself and act in a more determined way”.