Iran ‘s nuclear talks will resume “soon” after a modest win in Vienna Nuclear Weapons News

The seventh round of talks on restoring Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal in Vienna has come to an end, and although progress seems to have been made, the powers in the negotiating world are nowhere near an agreement.

The Joint Committee of the remaining signatories of the agreement, which was canceled by the US in 2018, was held on Friday at the Palais Coburg.

The delegation is expected to return to the Austrian capital in about a week with a view to reviving the Joint Comprehensive Action Plan (JCPOA).

“We don’t have months but weeks to reach an agreement,” European Union talks coordinator Enrique Mora told a news conference after Friday’s meeting.

“There is an urgent need, which is very important if we are to be truly successful in these negotiations.”

Russia’s chief negotiator, Mikhail Ulyanov, said in a tweet that talks would begin “soon” and added that the final round of negotiations was “successful because it prepared a solid basis for more intensive negotiations.”

Seventh round #ViennaTalks it was successful because it laid a solid foundation for more intensive negotiations. It is fully confirmed that more work will be done based on the results of the previous rounds. Negotiators now understand each other much better.

– Mikhail Ulyanov (@Amb_Ulyanov) December 17, 2021

Reports indicate that the parties are close to reaching a new joint draft, including elements of a text obtained by the end of the sixth round in June and new proposals presented as two documents by President Ebrahim Raisi’s administration earlier this month. .

If Iran, China, Russia, France, Germany and the United Kingdom, as well as the United States, which are indirectly involved, agree on a draft, it would serve as a basis for the talks.

Ahead of Friday’s meeting, Iran’s chief negotiator, Ali Bagheri Kani, tweeted that “good progress” had been made during the week and that an eighth round would be held after a short break.

Iran has said it wants to remove all sanctions imposed by the US as part of its “maximum pressure” campaign, which Westerners consider to be a maximalist stance.

Iran also wants a deadline to verify the lifting of sanctions, and guarantees that the US will not renounce the agreement again – demanding that it agree to present it as part of a third text when the initial two are agreed.

Nuclear developments

Western signatories to the nuclear deal have repeatedly called for urgency over Iran’s nuclear progress.

In a joint statement last week, the top diplomats called E3 he said “Without rapid progress, as Iran has rapidly advanced its nuclear program, the JCPOA will soon become an empty shell.”

After a meeting on Friday, E3 diplomats said in a statement that “there have been some technical advances in the last 24 hours, but this brings us closer to the place of the June talks.”

In addition, all participants said they wanted to continue with the talks, but the Iranian negotiator asked for a brief break.

Iran says its nuclear program is peaceful, saying that the only way to completely alleviate the concerns of Western members is to lift sanctions.

Iran is now using advanced centrifuges, has limited nuclear inspections and is enriching uranium to 60 percent after the US withdrew.

But the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has confirmed that it is not trying to get the 90 percent enrichment a bomb needs.

On Wednesday, Iran agreed that there would be nuclear surveillance allowed They returned to a controversial workshop to manufacture parts of Karaj centrifuges to replace cameras damaged or destroyed in a June sabotage attack on Israel.

This move was seen as a positive development for the Vienna talks, which ruled out the possibility of an extraordinary meeting of the IAEA Governing Board.

But at a news conference on Friday, IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi said the agency still wants answers about the missing recording of one of the four cameras destroyed in the attack.

The official said that “we have ways to try to reconcile the events on the ground with what Iran will soon tell us.”