Iran Expressed Readiness to Continue Nuclear Talks
EU Foreign Affairs Commissioner Josep Borrell visited Tehran and announced that Iran wants to resume the stalled negotiations on the international nuclear agreement in the coming days.
The ministers of foreign affairs and other officials from the P5+1 countries, the European Union and Iran meeting at the discussion for the original JCPOA in 2015. / Picture: © Wikimedia Commons / United States Department of State, Public Domain
Josep Borrell had spoken with Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian in the Iranian capital. According to a press statement, Borrell's main objective "was to break the current dynamic of escalation and to break the stalemate of the negotiations of the JCPOA".
"Since February, we have been living in a different world," the EU foreign affairs envoy explained, referring to the Russian war against Ukraine. According to Borell, it is now more important than ever to establish a "landmark agreement". Further Borrell stressed that world now needs "security and stability."
However, Iran's Foreign Minister Amir-Abdollahian said the Islamic Republic of Iran is ready to resume nuclear negotiations in the coming days. Josep Borell summarized his visit as "a positive meeting" because both parties decided to resume the "Iranians’ deal negotiations" in the coming days.
Stalled negotiations between Iran and the West
As has been widely reported, the goal is to return to the 2015 agreement that was reached between Iran, on the one hand, and China, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Russia and the United States, on the other. The goal was to substantially limit Iran's nuclear program.
However, negotiations stalled for a variety of reasons. The Russian invasion of Ukraine also caused stalled negotiations, as Vindobona.org reported. Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also recently visited Tehran to bolster bilateral relations between the two Western-sanctioned countries, as Vindobona.org reported.
However, as reported by Vindobona.org, the main reason for the deadlock are the disagreements between Tehran and Washington over the status of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. The Guards have been on a list of terrorist organizations in the U.S. for years.
Borrell added, however, that Tehran and Washington must now "resolve the last outstanding issues" and make decisions. An agreement, he said, is of global importance.
The International Atomic Energy Agency recently warned that Iran needs only a few weeks to produce the raw material for a nuclear bomb, as reported by Vindobona.org. The U.S. and the EU are concerned about Iran obtaining nuclear technology. Many in the West fear Iran wants to build nuclear weapons.
Tehran, on the other hand, repeatedly stresses that it will use nuclear technology only for peaceful purposes. The agreement is intended to substantially limit the Islamic Republic's nuclear program. In return, the lifting of sanctions is promised.