Iran says awaiting US decision on its ‘special initiatives’ for Vienna talks

The European Union’s coordinator for paused talks in Vienna, Enrique Mora, visited Tehran last week for discussions with Iran’s chief negotiator Ali Baqeri Kani.

“Serious and result-oriented negotiations with special initiatives from Iran were held,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh told reporters.

“If the US gives its response to some of the solutions that were proposed, we can be in the position that all sides return to Vienna,” he added during his weekly press conference.

The serious talks included “special initiatives” from Iran, Khatibzadeh said, stressing that the situation is favorable for all parties to return to Vienna to conclude an agreement in case Washington responds to such proposals.

The negotiations, aimed at bringing the US back into the deal and Iran to full compliance with it, had stalled for about two months, AFP wrote.

Iran has been engaged in direct negotiations with France, Germany, Britain, Russia and China to revive the deal, known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The US has participated indirectly.

The US unilaterally pulled out of the accord in 2018 under then-president Donald Trump and reimposed tough sanctions, prompting Iran to begin rolling back on its own commitments a year later in retaliation.

“If the US announces its political decision today, which we have not yet received, we can say that an important step has been taken in the progress of the negotiations,” Khatibzadeh noted.

Among the sticking points is Tehran’s demand to remove the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps from a US “terrorist” list.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on Friday said Mora’s mission to Tehran went “better than expected” and the stalled negotiations “have been reopened.”

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said on Monday the JCPOA can be revived “within a few days”.

“Now the document is at a high degree of readiness for adoption. There are some political problems, which are not related to the finalization of the text. Everything that is required in terms of finalizing the document itself can be done literally within a few days,” Ryabkov said.

“Russia has worked for the result, and in terms of our interests, including in the context of peaceful nuclear cooperation with Iran, the text is quite satisfactory [for us]; in our opinion, there is nothing to fine-tune,” he said, according to TASS.

Source:Iran Daily