Austrian police stand guard at the entrance of the Vienna Hotel where diplomats from the European Union, China, Russia and Iran are holding talks. (April 6, 2021)
The United States and Iran remain deeply divided over resuming compliance with the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, despite some progress in recent indirect nuclear talks in Vienna, a senior U.S. official said on Wednesday (April 21).
According to Reuters, a senior U.S. State Department official told reporters on a conference call that the negotiations may take several rounds, the outcome remains uncertain and a conclusion is not yet close to being reached.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the main disagreements center on which U.S. sanctions need to be lifted and what actions Iran needs to take to return to compliance with its obligations to limit its nuclear program.
“Differences remain, and some of them are very significant,” he said, adding that “we are not close to reaching a negotiated conclusion. The outcome remains uncertain. But we have made some progress.”
Reuters also reported that the European parties involved in the Iran nuclear deal said earlier that they believed some progress had been made in the first two rounds of indirect U.S.-Iran talks, but that significant obstacles remained.
The talks are set to continue next week. The U.S. delegation is staying at a different location in Vienna because Iran has refused to talk directly. Representatives of Britain, France, Russia, Germany and China will communicate back and forth between the two sides.
The Wall Street Journal quoted two people familiar with the matter as saying the United States is open to easing sanctions against Iran’s central bank, national oil, cruise lines and key economic sectors such as steel and aluminum.
The newspaper also quoted a senior European official as saying that the U.S. government has also hinted that it may ease sanctions on sectors such as textiles, automobiles, shipping and insurance.
For his part, Mikhail Ulyanov, the chief negotiator at the talks and Russia’s representative to international organizations in Vienna, told the Wall Street Journal that work had begun on drafting the steps the two sides would need to take to resume compliance with the agreement. He said the negotiations could be completed by the end of May.
He said:- “I don’t think there are insurmountable obstacles to reaching an agreement.”
Iran and the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany agreed to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, the Iranian nuclear deal) in 2015. Under the deal, Iran committed to limiting its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions against it.
The United States withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018 under President Trump’s presidency and reimposed economic sanctions on Iran. In response, Iran, while seeking to lift sanctions, is departing from its commitments under the Iran nuclear deal and has begun to increase its stockpile of enriched uranium and enrichment of uranium.
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