Negotiations to save the pact were resumed in Vienna just before the looming collapse of the nuclear deal with Iran. The first round of multilateral talks since March began on Thursday in the Austrian capital, mediated by high-ranking EU diplomat Enrique Mora.
Western diplomats believe that there are only a few weeks left to restore the pact that is intended to prevent the construction of nuclear weapons in Iran. However, there were no immediate signs of a breakthrough on Thursday.
A draft solution to limit Iran’s nuclear program again and simultaneously lift US sanctions has been on the table since March. A recently slightly modified text is now being discussed in Vienna with representatives from Iran, the USA, Germany, France, Great Britain, Russia and China. According to information from the German Press Agency, the new version should take into account the nuclear advances that Tehran has made in recent months, which would have to be revised to save the agreement.
This includes the enrichment of uranium up to a purity of 60 percent. According to diplomats, Iran has already produced about enough of this material to be processed into a nuclear weapon. Iran’s nuclear chief Mohammed Eslami claimed on Monday that his country could already build a nuclear bomb but did not want to.
expectations of the United States
In addition, the negotiations recently hung on the question of whether the USA would lift its classification of the powerful Iranian Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization and whether Washington could give guarantees that it would not withdraw from the nuclear pact again. “The Americans should now show political maturity and act responsibly,” Iran’s chief negotiator Ali Bagheri wrote on Twitter. The envisaged release of Western prisoners in Iran is also one of the sensitive points.
The US withdrew from the agreement in 2018 under then-President Donald Trump and reinstated sanctions on Iran’s oil and financial sectors. Iran then disregarded the restrictions of the pact: the nuclear program was ramped up again and monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was severely restricted.
USA sees Tehran on the train
Tehran is still Washington’s turn: the United States is ready for a solution, tweeted US chief negotiator Robert Malley. “It will soon be clear whether Iran is also ready.” “Our expectations are limited,” he wrote. In any case, for Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi, an agreement would mean a way out of economic isolation. Experts in Iran see the war in Ukraine as a chance that Iranian gas will be used instead of Russian gas in the future.
Western diplomats fear that the chances of compromise in November’s US congressional election campaign are dwindling as both Democrat and Republican lawmakers mistrust a deal with Iran. At the same time, experts and diplomats fear that Tehran will soon have enough nuclear know-how to build nuclear weapons despite a return to the 2015 restrictions. On Tuesday, the IAEA reported that Iran was continuing to enrich uranium with sophisticated machinery.
Bagheris Tweet Malleys Tweet
