Friday , 29 March 2024

EU Awaiting Response From U.S., Tehran Before Calling Meeting Of Nuclear Deal Negotiators

RFL/RE – EU foreign-policy chief Josep Borrell is waiting on responses from Washington and Tehran before calling a meeting of negotiators on the Iranian nuclear deal, his spokesman said.

“We are awaiting the Iranians’ response,” spokesman Peter Stano said. “A meeting will be called if all parties are in agreement and are all ready,” he said. “There is an urgent need to resume discussions very soon.”

Borrell is in Washington, where he is meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken over the Iranian nuclear accord.

The meetings are part of a push to resume talks to revive the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers.

EU chief negotiator Enrique Mora, who coordinated the 2015 deal that granted Iran sanctions relief in return for curbs on its nuclear activities, is currently in Iran underlining the “urgency of resuming discussions.”

Amid mounting pressure from EU countries and the United States for a swift resumption of talks, Mora met on October 14 with Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri, who is in charge of the nuclear file for Iran.

Iran and the EU agreed to hold further dialogue in Brussels aimed at resuming talks after Mora and Bagheri met for several hours.

“At the end of this meeting, the two parties agreed to continue dialogue on questions of mutual interest in the coming days in Brussels,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement, which noted that Mora said the EU was “ready to collaborate with Iran and the other parties.”

Saudi Arabia on October 14 also discussed Iran’s nuclear program with Blinken, the country’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on October 15, describing the meeting as “productive.”

Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan al-Saud also met with Robert Malley, the U.S. special envoy for Iran, and discussed intensifying joint efforts against “Iranian violations of international treaties related to the nuclear agreement,” the Saudi Foreign Ministry said.

Al-Saud was also quoted as saying that Saudi Arabia’s talks with Iran had been “cordial” and describing the negotiations as “exploratory,” the Financial Times reported on October 15.

“We are serious about the talks,” al-Saud told the newspaper in an interview. “For us it’s not that big a shift. We’ve always said we want to find a way to stabilize the region.”

The nuclear accord, which offered Tehran the lifting of some international sanctions in exchange for a ramping down of its nuclear enrichment program under strict UN supervision, was left in tatters after the United States unilaterally pulled out of the pact in 2018.

The administration of then-President Donald Trump started reimposing crippling sanctions on Iran, while Tehran has progressively rolled back its own commitments to the deal.

Indirect negotiations between Washington and Tehran, via intermediaries from other parties to the accord — Britain, China, France, Germany, and Russia — began in Vienna in April, but the talks were suspended following the June election of hard-line Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.

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