Iran Says Nuclear Talks to Resume 'Very Soon,' Gives No Date

Iran will return to talks on resuming compliance with the 2015 Iran nuclear deal “very soon,” Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian told reporters on Friday, but gave no specific date.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran will return to the table of negotiations. We are reviewing the Vienna negotiations files currently and, very soon, Iran’s negotiations with the ‘four plus one’ countries will recommence,” Amirabdollahian said.

He was referring to talks that began in April between Iran and the five other nations still in the 2015 deal - Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia. European diplomats have served as chief intermediaries between Washington and Tehran, which has refused to negotiate directly with U.S. officials. The Iranian foreign ministry said on Tuesday that the Vienna talks would resume in a few weeks, the official Iranian news agency IRNA reported.

European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, who met with Amirabdollahian in New York, said on Friday that he also expected Iran would soon return to negotiations, adding that he was “optimistic” about the prospects for the nuclear deal.

Under the deal Iran curbed its uranium enrichment program, a possible pathway to nuclear arms, in return for the lifting of economic sanctions. In 2018 then-U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew from the accord and re-imposed sanctions, crippling Iran’s economy and prompting Iran to take steps to violate its nuclear limits.

The Vienna talks, which aim to bring both Washington and Tehran back into compliance with the deal, were adjourned in June after hardliner Ebrahim Raeisi was elected Iran’s president.
“We believe that Mr. President (Joe) Biden keeps carrying close to his heart a thick file of the Trump sanctions against Iran, even while seemingly pursuing negotiations and simultaneously levying new sanctions,” Amirabdollahian said. This paradoxical behavior has not been, and is not, a positive message or constructive message for the new administration in Tehran,” he said.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters on Thursday that Washington has been “very sincere and very steadfast” in its bid to revive the nuclear deal, but warned the possibility a return to mutual compliance “is not indefinite.”

The window is still open to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal but won't be forever, a senior U.S. official said on Thursday, saying Iran has yet to name a negotiator, set a date for talks or say whether it would resume where they left off in June. ashington was prepared to be patient, the U.S. official told reporters, but said at some point Iran's nuclear advances would overtake the deal and the United States and its partners would have to decide whether Iran was willing to revive it. We're still interested. We still want to come back to the table," the senior U.S. State Department official said in a telephone briefing. "The window of opportunity is open. It won't be open forever if Iran takes a different course."

The U.S. official declined to say what the United States might do if Iran refuses to return to negotiations, or if a resumption of the original deal proves impossible. Such U.S. contingency planning is often called "Plan B." "The 'Plan B' that we're concerned about is the one that Iran may be contemplating, where they want to continue to build their nuclear program and not be seriously engaged in talks to return to the JCPOA," he said, in a reference to the deal's formal name, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

Also, British foreign minister Liz Truss held her first meeting with Iran's foreign minister and urged Iran to return rapidly to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) negotiations in Vienna with a view to all sides coming back into compliance and reducing tensions over Iran's nuclear program, a UK government spokesman said on Wednesday.

Likewise, Iran's foreign minister expressed a "very clear intent" to return to nuclear talks in Vienna, Ireland's foreign minister said on Wednesday after meeting with his Iranian counterpart on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.

During Trump’s presidency tensions between Washington and Tehran culminated in 2020 with the U.S. killing of Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani and a retaliatory Iranian ballistic missile attack against U.S. forces in Iraq. We have received this message several times from diplomatic channels - that the current U.S. officials say that had we been in charge then, we would have not issued the command to assassinate General Soleimani,” Amirabdollahian said. peaking on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, the foreign minister also described conversations between officials of regional rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia as “constructive” and he said Tehran had put forward dynamic proposals towards achieving peace in Yemen. The war in Yemen is widely seen in the region as a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia. - Reuters