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RFL/RE – Iran’s nuclear negotiator is to meet with EU envoy Enrique Mora in Brussels on October 27 as U.S. and EU officials say efforts continue to restart talks on reviving the Iran nuclear deal.
Ali Bagheri Kani said on Twitter earlier this week that he will be in Brussels “to continue our talks on result-oriented negotiations.”
Kani is expected to meet with Mora, who coordinates talks among Iran and the other parties to the deal: Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia, and the United States.
Western countries have been expressing concerns about the lag in restarting the talks, which have been on hold since Iran’s presidential election in June that brought hard-liner Ebrahim Raisi to power.
Last week, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said “time is pressing” in getting the talks going again, adding that the new government in Tehran had had enough time to prepare.
Mora visited Tehran earlier this month to push Iran to restart full negotiations, and EU spokesman Peter Stano said the EU’s diplomatic service was “sparing no efforts to resume talks of all parties in Vienna.”
The U.S. special envoy for Iran, Robert Malley, told reporters on October 25 that Washington has become increasingly worried that Tehran would keep delaying a return to the talks.SEE ALSO:U.S. Iran Envoy Warns Tehran May Be Delaying Talks To Advance Nuclear Program
Malley, fresh off a weeklong trip to European and Gulf Arab nations, said Iran may be engaging in delaying tactics to allow more time to advance its nuclear program.
“We’re in a critical phase of the efforts to see whether we can revive the JCPOA,” Malley said, referring to the deal formally called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. “We’ve had a hiatus of many months and the official reasons given by Iran for why we’re in this hiatus are wearing very thin.”
While saying that the window for both the United States and Iran to resume compliance with the agreement “will not be open forever,” Malley said the United States would still be willing to engage in diplomacy with Iran as it weighed other options to prevent Tehran from getting nuclear weapons.
“We will continue to pursue diplomacy, even as we pursue other steps if we face a world in which we need to do that,” Malley said. He declined to describe those other steps.
Former President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the international accord in 2018 and reimposed harsh sanctions, despite Iran’s compliance with the deal. In response, Tehran has gradually breached limits imposed by the pact, including on uranium enrichment, refining it to higher purity, and installing advanced centrifuges.
U.S. national-security adviser Jake Sullivan said the United States is alarmed by Iran’s actions since leaving the talks, but the White House still believes there is an opportunity to resolve the situation diplomatically.
“We are alarmed and concerned by the steps that they have taken since they left the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action,” Sullivan said on October 26. “Our first and highest priority is to get back to the table.”
President Joe Biden came into office offering to revive the deal, but six rounds of indirect talks with Iran in Vienna that began in April failed to reach agreement.
The main sticking points center around Tehran’s demand for a broad lifting of U.S. sanctions and technical details about how Tehran will return to compliance. In recent months, there have been repeated delays as EU mediators and Iran discuss the terms of a return to negotiations, but no date has been agreed.
