TEHRAN — The
EU’s coordinator for talks between
Iran and world powers over restoring a frayed 2015 nuclear deal will visit
Tehran this week, Iran’s foreign ministry said Monday.
اضافة اعلان
The coordinator,
Enrique Mora, has played a
key role as an intermediary between the US and Iran during a year of on-off
talks in Vienna that seek to revive the deal.
The date of Mora’s arrival in Iran’s capital
has not been confirmed, but local press reported he is expected on Tuesday.
“The agenda for talks in Tehran is nearly
finalized,” foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said at a weekly press
briefing.
Mora “will meet with Ali Bagheri, the
Islamic Republic of Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator.”
The 2015 deal gave
Iran sanctions relief in
exchange for curbs on its nuclear program to guarantee that it could not
develop a nuclear weapon, something Tehran has always denied wanting to do.
It was agreed between Iran and the five
permanent UN Security Council members China, Russia, the US, UK, and France,
alongside Germany.
But
Washington unilaterally withdrew in 2018
under then-president Donald Trump and re-imposed biting economic sanctions,
prompting Iran to begin rolling back its own commitments.
Talks in Vienna have focused on bringing
Washington back into the deal and lifting its sanctions, while ensuring
Tehran’s full adherence to its own commitments.
‘Right
direction’
Adversaries
for decades, Iran and the US have been engaged in negotiations only indirectly,
exchanging views through the EU’s Mora, even while Tehran has negotiated
directly with the remaining parties to the deal.
“Mora’s trip moves the talks in the right
direction,” Khatibzadeh said, noting that messages are “constantly exchanged
between Iran and the United States via the
European Union”.
The Vienna talks have been stalled since
March, and
Iran called on April 25 for a meeting to revive the dialogue “as
soon as possible”.
Among the key remaining sticking points is
Iran’s demand that Washington delist its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from
a US terror list.
But Khatibzadeh said that the media “must not
reduce the issues between Iran and the US to a single issue, such as the
Guards”.
Khatibzadeh also said on Monday that the red
“lines set by the high authorities of the Islamic republic have been respected,
and that is why we are here today,” without elaborating.
“If the US decides today to respect the
rights of the Iranian people, we can go to Vienna after Mora’s visit and sign
the agreement,” he said.
In an interview with the
Financial Times published on Saturday, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell
said he was seeking a “middle way” to bridge the remaining gap between Tehran
and Washington.
He said that he wanted Mora to visit
Tehran,
but that Iran had appeared “very much reluctant”. He described the EU’s
diplomatic push as “the last bullet” in attempts to salvage the deal.
“We cannot continue like this forever, because in the
meantime Iran continues developing their nuclear program,” Borrell added.
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