On April 6, the signatories of the Iran nuclear deal met in Vienna for talks. The U.S. and Iran are engaged in an indirect dialogue, while EU representatives are acting as intermediaries.
From Tuesday (April 6), EU mediators began shuttling between US and Iranian officials in the Austrian capital Vienna as they try to get the two countries to revive the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal, from which Washington withdrew three years ago.
In May 2018, then-U.S. President Donald Trump (Trump) announced his withdrawal from the Iran Nuclear Agreement (the full name of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Iranian Nuclear Issue). Trump said the deal not only failed to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons, but also failed to regulate Iran’s financing of terrorism.
The Biden administration, for its part, said Washington is prepared to return to the Iran nuclear deal if Iran fully complies with it.
Washington said Monday (April 5) that it expects discussions between the U.S. and Iran to be difficult. Neither side expects an early breakthrough.
The U.S. and Iran confirmed on Friday (April 2) that officials from both countries will not hold face-to-face bilateral talks while in Vienna. Meanwhile, other signatories to the Iran Nuclear Deal will send representatives to meet in Vienna.
“We do not currently anticipate direct talks between the U.S. and Iran during this process, although the U.S. is open to direct talks.” U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said.
Reuters reported that an EU diplomatic source revealed that “Iran and the U.S. will be in the same town, but not in the same room.”
Vienna is where the 2015 Iran Nuclear Agreement was signed. On Tuesday, representatives of the remaining signatories to the deal held brief preliminary talks at a hotel in Vienna.
Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia’s envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency, said after the meeting that the parties have tasked two expert-level groups to work on lifting sanctions and nuclear issues to identify concrete steps to move forward.
The experts are scheduled to begin technical work later Tuesday aimed at combining the list of sanctions the U.S. can lift with the nuclear obligations Iran should fulfill.
“The resumption of the JCPOA (Iran Nuclear Agreement) will not happen immediately. It will take some time. How long? No one knows. The most important thing after today’s Joint Commission meeting is that the practical work to achieve this goal has begun.” Ulyanov said in a tweet.
While in Vienna, officials from Britain, France and Germany will act as mediators between Iran and the United States, shuttling between the two delegations. Russia and China, signatories to the deal, also attended the Vienna meeting with Britain, France and Germany.
The U.S. delegation, led by special envoy Rob Malley and sanctions expert Richard Nephew, is based at a nearby hotel.
“It will involve discussions to determine the steps that the U.S. must take and to determine the steps that Iran must take.” Marley told NPR radio Tuesday morning.
The Biden administration wants to revive the Iran Nuclear Deal, but says that would require negotiations. Iran currently refuses to negotiate directly with the United States.
An EU official said the goal is to reach some form of agreement before Iran’s presidential elections in June, although both Iranian and U.S. officials have said there is no rush.
When former President Trump announced his withdrawal from the Iran Nuclear Deal in 2018, he said, “The Iran Nuclear Deal is flawed at its core, and if we do nothing, we know what’s going to happen. That is, in a short period of time, the world’s number one sponsor of terrorism is about to get the most dangerous (nuclear) weapon in the world.”
Trump has been critical of the deal as short-sighted and myopic and an umbrella for Iran to develop nuclear weapons. The lifting of international economic sanctions on Iran over the past few years has proven to not only unfreeze vast amounts of dollar-denominated assets, but the massive trade flows have both secured funding for Iran’s nuclear research and simultaneously provided Iran with significant funds to fund terrorism.
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