Iran Nuclear Talks Edge Forward as Negotiators Return to Vienna

(Bloomberg) --

Negotiators in Vienna made progress in rescuing nuclear talks between Iran and world powers, after revised Iranian proposals put forward last week appeared to derail the diplomacy. 

Speaking to reporters in London Friday, Iranian ambassador Mohsen Baharvand said negotiations cleared up “misunderstandings” over Tehran’s revisions to draft texts on how to restore a 2015 agreement that had capped the Iranian nuclear program in return for sanctions relief.

The talks are the first since a new hardline government took power in Iran in August. Iran has held a series of discussions with its Chinese and Russian allies in recent days.

A senior European official, who didn’t want to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter, said a new Iranian delegation could be expected to first seek to make political points. But negotiators were now advancing in a logical way hoping to resolve seven or eight major issues, the official said.

American Pessimism 

“Yesterday there was an optimistic approach in the meeting, as far as the information I have received,” Baharvand said, suggesting that initial European opposition to Tehran’s changes was based on a misunderstanding over the time the proposals would consume and an incorrect interpretation that Iran didn’t want to address its nuclear activities at all.

Iran wants assurances on the effectiveness of sanctions removal by the U.S. and for legal and practical loopholes over the implementation of the deal to be closed or mitigated, he said. How to dovetail the lifting of those penalties with Iran rolling back its expanding nuclear-enrichment program is another key hurdle.

“The government of the United States should declare clearly that they are not going to withdraw from it. There is a mechanism in the JCPOA if you have a problem or a conflict and you have to use it,” Baharvand added.

On Saturday, a senior U.S. official said Iran hasn’t shown seriousness in the Vienna talks, in what was then the most pessimistic American assessment of the negotiations to date. Iran walked back many offers it had made in previous sessions and demanded sanctions relief beyond the terms of the original 2015 accord, the official told reporters.

The Biden administration warned Thursday it was preparing a fresh round of sanctions against Iran in case talks fail.

Even before then-President Donald Trump exited the deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, in 2018 and reimposed sanctions, Iran had been struggling to realize economic benefits from the agreement as companies and banks feared running foul of remaining penalties.

“The difference now is that, if we are not assured, then we are not going to have a deal,” Baharvand said, adding that ideas included strengthening the European Union’s INSTEX trade channel and maybe even transforming it into a bank so that it can be isolated from the U.S. financial system.

The U.S. assault on the 2015 deal also triggered a security crisis in the Persian Gulf and beyond, raising tensions between Iran and its two main regional rivals, Israel and Saudi Arabia. 

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