In Moscow, Russian and Iranian Foreign Ministers Sergey Lavrov and Hossein Amir Abdullah on Thursday promised to continue negotiations in Vienna on the Iran nuclear deal.
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The diplomatic chiefs of the United States, Germany and France agreed on Thursday that a return to the nuclear deal with Iran is possible, but they considered it a necessity to speed up talks in this regard.
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said he believed reviving the Iran nuclear deal was still possible, after “modest progress” in talks in Vienna.
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“My personal assessment, after speaking with all of our colleagues, is that a return to mutual compliance is still possible“We have seen, as I say, modest progress in the last two weeks of discussions” in Vienna, Blinken told reporters in Berlin after talks with his European counterparts.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Barbock called for “urgent progress” in the ongoing difficult negotiations.
“We need to make progress very urgentlyThe German diplomatic chief said after her meeting with her counterparts.
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In the same vein came the statements of French Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, who described the progress in the talks as “biased, timid and slow” and said that the negotiations “cannot continue at this slow pace.”
The French foreign minister considered that there is “an urgent need to change the pace, otherwise it will inevitably be the end of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action”, which is an abbreviation of the Vienna Convention on Iran’s nuclear weapons signed with Russia, China, Germany, France, the United Kingdom and the United States. States.
Iran warns Washington of ‘Plan B’
Iran is negotiating in Vienna with the remaining five countries in the agreement, and indirectly with the United States, to try to salvage the agreement that limits Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of US sanctions.
In 2018, Joe Biden’s predecessor in the US presidency, Donald Trump, withdrew the country from the agreement and imposed new sanctions on Tehran, which responded the following year by breaching restrictions on its nuclear program by stockpiling more uranium than agreed.
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The goal of the ongoing negotiations is for the United States to return to the agreement and Iran to fully comply with it again, which is why it wants sanctions lifted.
Last Friday, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, expressed optimism that talks in Vienna could take place “within weeks”.
But Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzad on Monday asked the United States to expedite a decision on a possible lifting of sanctions and warned that Washington would not like the “Plan B” issue because negotiations were failing.
In Moscow, the foreign ministers of Russia and Iran, Sergey Lavrov and Hossein Amir Abdullah, pledged on Thursday to continue negotiations in Vienna on the Iran nuclear deal.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the diplomats met on the sidelines of the first official visit of Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi to Russia, with a delegation that included several ministers.
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“The two sides confirmed their intention to continue negotiations in Vienna to return the nuclear agreement to its original form, without additions or exceptions.“, He said.
Thus, Lavrov and his counterpart focused on the 2015 agreement on Iran’s nuclear program, “which remains the most important non-proliferation agreement,” according to Russia.
