Iran has said that the multilateral talks in Vienna to restore the country’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers will resume before the end of November.
Following a meeting on Wednesday with European officials in Brussels, Iran’s top nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani confirmed the news, saying that the exact date will be announced next week.
Bagheri took on the role of Iran’s new chief nuclear negotiator in mid-September.
Iran concluded six rounds of talks with China, Russia, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom at the Austrian capital in late June to allow the administration of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi to take form. The United States participated in the talks indirectly.
Under the administration of former US President Donald Trump, Washington unilaterally abandoned the nuclear deal in 2018 and imposed sanctions on Iran. The US has been saying for weeks that the window to return to the talks won’t remain open forever while the Iranian officials maintained they will return to the negotiating table “soon”.
Iran wants to start afresh
The Raisi administration has long been signalling that it may not wish to resume the talks over the deal – formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – in 2018 and exactly where they left off during the administration of the former Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.
On Wednesday, Tehran sent out its clearest message. Just before Bagheri revealed the news, Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said, “We don’t want to enter the Vienna negotiations from the deadlock point of the Vienna negotiations.”
Speaking at a press conference in Tehran after hosting a conference featuring Afghanistan’s neighbours, Abdollahian added that Iran accepts the overall format of the talks.
Earlier this month, in a tweet, Russia’s top negotiator in Vienna Mikhail Ulyanov, had said that it is very important “not to resume the Vienna talks on JCPOA from scratch”.
Another issue that Iran is concerned about and continues to push for guarantees is that the US and European powers – who complied with US sanctions – won’t back out from their commitments in the future.
Meanwhile, there was also some controversy over the format under which Iranian officials wanted to meet with their European counterparts prior to the Vienna negotiations.
The three European powers party to the JCPOA offered to meet as a group after talks with EU’s Enrique Mora in Tehran earlier this month were successful, but Iran refused.
On Wednesday, the Iranian foreign minister called the joint meeting “disagreeable” especially as the E3 usually release a shared statement after, which he said contains only their unilateral viewpoints.
Amirabdollahian said, “Whether in Brussels or in Tehran, we support any bilateral diplomatic talks with Germany, UK and France. But on the nuclear issue, we only consider talks with them in the format of P4+1, which also includes Russia and China as our other negotiating sides.”
