Europeans, US Warn Iran Nuclear Talks Won't Be Open-Ended

Western officials warned Tehran on Sunday that negotiations to revive its nuclear deal could not continue indefinitely, after the sides announced a break following the election of a new hardline president in Iran. Negotiations have been ongoing in Vienna since April to work out how Iran and the United States can both return to compliance with the nuclear pact, which Washington abandoned in 2018 under then-President Donald Trump, and Iran subsequently violated.

Sunday's pause in the talks came after Ebrahim Raisi, a hardliner and fierce critic of the West, won Iran's presidential election on Friday. Two diplomats said they expected a break of around 10 days. Raisi will take office in early August, replacing pragmatist Hassan Rohani, under whom Tehran struck the deal agreeing to curbs to its nuclear program in return for the lifting of international sanctions.

Iranian and Western officials alike say Raisi's rise is unlikely to alter Iran's negotiating position: Iran's hardline Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei already has final say on all major policy.
Still, some Iranian officials have suggested that Tehran could have an interest in pushing through an agreement before the new president takes office in August, to give Raisi a clean slate.
An Iranian government official close to the talks told Reuters that if a deal is finalized before Raisi takes office, the new president will be able to deflect blame for any concessions onto his predecessor: "Rohani, not Raisi, will be blamed for any future problems regarding the deal," he said.

Britain, France and Germany, the European "E3", have effectively been acting as mediators, shuttling between the Iranian delegation and a U.S. team that - Washington having quit the pact - is not a formal participant. The Western countries say the longer Iran violates the deal and produces banned nuclear material, the harder it becomes to restore the pact. "As we have stated before, time is on nobody’s side. These talks cannot be open ended," E3 diplomats said in a note sent to reporters, adding that the most difficult issues still need to be resolved.
U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan echoed those comments telling broadcaster ABC News that there was still "a fair distance to travel", including on sanctions and on the nuclear commitments that Iran has to make.

With the talks on pause, attention will now turn to extending a separate accord between Iran and the U.N. nuclear watchdog IAEA, which expires on June 24. Iran has ended extra monitoring measures that were introduced under the 2015 deal. EU political director Enrique Mora, who is coordinating the nuclear talks, said he expected an extension that would let data continue to be collected while placing limits on the IAEA's access to it for now.

Iran said one of the “serious issues” raised in the latest round of talks to revive the 2015 nuclear deal was the need for a guarantee from the U.S. that it won’t exit the accord and reimpose sanctions on the Islamic Republic again in the future. “We need guarantees that give us assurances that a repeat of these sanctions and exiting the nuclear deal, as the past U.S. government did, won’t happen again,” Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s lead negotiator in talks with world powers in Vienna, told Iranian state TV, adding that a return to the accord won’t be possible without this condition being met. Former President Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of the deal -- negotiated by the Obama administration -- in 2018.

Abbas Araghchi said all the documents required in order to finalize an agreement with the U.S. and other world powers over how to resurrect the 2015 nuclear accord are ready, the Islamic Republic’s lead negotiator. Speaking in Vienna on the sidelines of the latest talks, Araghchi said “principal issues still remain,” but that he hoped a final agreement to restore the deal can be reached in the next round of negotiations within the coming weeks.  “Indirect negotiations are difficult and we need to work much more carefully to prevent misunderstandings,” Araghchi said, referring to the fact that the U.S. and Iran are not negotiating directly but through European mediators. Araghchi added that delegations plan to return to their capital cities after meeting in Vienna on Sunday, in order to consult with their governments. - Bloomberg, Reuters