Diplomats say time is running out to resurrect the pact, which then-U.S. President Donald Trump abandoned in 2018, angering Iran and dismaying the other powers involved – Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia.
E.U., Iranian and Russian delegates offered an optimistic assessment after the new round began with a session of the remaining parties to the deal, without the U.S. – whom Iran refuses to meet face-to-face.
“I feel extremely positive about what I have seen today,” Enrique Mora, the E.U. official chairing the talks, said after the meeting – the seventh round of talks aimed at reviving a deal under which Iran limited its disputed uranium enrichment program in return for relief from U.S., E.U. and U.N. economic sanctions.
Mora said the new Iranian delegation had stuck to its demand that all sanctions be lifted.
The meeting in Vienna ended a long hiatus triggered by the election in June of Ebrahim Raisi, an anti-Western hardliner. The talks are effectively indirect negotiations between Tehran and Washington, with other officials shuttling between them.
Tehran’s negotiating team has set out demands that U.S. and European diplomats consider unrealistic, Western diplomats say.
Iran has adopted an uncompromising position by demanding the removal of all US and E.U. sanctions imposed since 2017.
Iran’s top negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani also said the U.S. and its Western allies should offer guarantees that no new sanctions would be imposed in the future.
Reuters
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