Talks on Iran's nuclear program have resumed

 

Diplomats from the EU, Iran and Russia sounded optimistic after Iran and world powers held their first talks in five months on Monday to try to salvage their 2015 nuclear deal, although Tehran has publicly taken a firm stance, which it says Western powers will not work, Reuters commented.

Diplomats say the time is running out for a revival of the treaty, which the former US administration of President Donald Trump abandoned in 2018, angering Iran and embarrassing other participating powers - Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia.                                                            At the talks, the delegates of the European Union, Iran and Russia gave an optimistic assessment, after the new round began with a meeting of the other parties to the deal, without the United States, with which Iran refuses to meet face to face.

"I feel extremely positive about what I saw today," said Enrique Mora, the EU's presiding officer after the meeting, the seventh round of talks aimed at reviving the agreement, under which Iran has curtailed its controversial uranium enrichment program. replacing the easing of US, EU and UN economic sanctions.                                                                            Mora told reporters that the new Iranian delegation had adhered to its demand that all sanctions be lifted. But he also added that Tehran has not categorically rejected the results of the previous six rounds of talks between April and June.

"They accepted that the work done in the first six rounds was a good basis for building our work forward," he said. "Of course, we will include the new political sensitivity of the new Iranian administration.".                                                    The Vienna meeting put an end to a long hiatus caused by the June election of Ebrahim Raisi, an anti-Western hardline Iranian judge as the country's president. The talks are, in fact, indirect talks between Tehran and Washington, with officials communicating between them.

Tehran's negotiating team has made demands that US and European diplomats find unrealistic, Western diplomats say.Iran has taken an uncompromising stance, demanding the lifting of all US and European Union sanctions imposed since 2017, including those unrelated to its nuclear program, in a process that can be verified.

The Islamic Republic's chief negotiator, Ali Bagheri Kani, also said the United States and its Western allies must offer assurances that no new sanctions will be imposed in the future.                                                                                                   "It is a great achievement that all parties to the meeting accepted Iran's request to first clear the situation with illegal and unjust US sanctions and then (we) to discuss other issues and decide on these issues," he told reporters.

There was no immediate comment from other parties on Bagheri Kani's words about the sequence of topics.