US(Washington Insider Magazine)-TEHRAN, Iran (Transatlantic Today) — In what looks to be a last-ditch attempt to restart negotiations over Tehran’s shattered 2015 nuclear agreement with world powers, Iran, the European Union, and the United States announced on Wednesday that they will send top delegates to Vienna.
It wasn’t immediately clear if all other signatories to the historic agreement would attend the unexpected meeting or if there had been any advancement following a prolonged impasse and a recent unsuccessful round of indirect negotiations between the United States and Iran in Doha.
Enrique Mora, the representative of the European Union who is presiding over the talks, stated that the negotiations would center on the most recent draft to restore the agreement, and Ali Bagheri Kani, the chief nuclear negotiator for Iran, said he was traveling to the Austrian capital to advance the talks.
Rob Malley, the U.S. special envoy for Iran, announced on Twitter that he was getting ready to go to Vienna for negotiations. Before the discussions, he warned that American “expectations are in check.”
Majid Takht Ravanchi, the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations, stated on Wednesday that Iran has been negotiating “in good will” to restore complete implementation of the 2015 accord since April 2021, and he blamed the United States for the lack of progress.
Berlin will be represented in the Vienna negotiations on an “expert level,” according to the German Foreign Ministry, which also stated that it backed the attempts to completely resurrect the agreement “even if hopes are very small.” It encouraged Iran to finalize the agreement once more and warned that doing so would require giving up maximalist stances in areas unrelated to the nuclear agreement.
Mikhail Ulyanov, the principal representative of Russia at the negotiations, also stated on Twitter that Russian negotiators, a significant signatory to the nuclear accord, “stand ready for constructive talks in order to finalize the agreement.”
According to ABC NEWS, there are still significant issues that Tehran wants Washington to resolve before it will agree to resolve, including lifting the terrorism sanctions on Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard. These issues have made it less likely that the deal will be restored in recent months.
The meeting in Vienna was scheduled at the last minute after EU foreign affairs leader Josep Borrell persistently pressed to end the stalemate and save the agreement during the previous weeks. “The space for additional significant compromises has been exhausted,” he recently wrote in The Financial Times.
The United States left the 2015 agreement, which removed the majority of international sanctions against Tehran in return for tough limitations on Tehran’s nuclear programme. According to nonproliferation specialists, Iran has since greatly increased its nuclear activity and currently possesses enough highly enriched uranium to power one nuclear weapon.
Iran would still need to create a weapon and a delivery system for it, which would probably take several months to complete. Although U.N. experts and Western intelligence agencies claim Iran maintained a structured military nuclear programme through 2003, Iran asserts that its programme is for peaceful reasons.
