Iran says ‘new understanding’ is taking shape at nuclear talks

World 09:40 PM - 2021-04-17

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Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Saturday that Tehran was working on a draft text that could work as a framework for subsequent talks

 

Iran’s lead negotiator in talks aimed at reviving the nuclear deal said world powers had reached a “new understanding" and should soon start drafting a text outlining how they will restore the accord.

 

Speaking to Iranian state television, Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that serious disagreements still remained but that Iran was working on a draft text that could work as a framework for subsequent talks.

 

“The drafting of the text can begin now and the Iranian delegation has prepared and presented its text on the nuclear sphere and the lifting of sanctions," Araghchi said.

 

Earlier this week Araghchi said that Washington and Tehran had to specify the steps that they would each need to take in order to restore the 2015 deal, including a tally of all Trump-era sanctions that the U.S. would need to remove from Iran’s economy.

 

Saturday’s comments inject new hope into a process that was plunged into crisis last week after the second attack in less than a year on a major Iranian nuclear facility triggered the Islamic Republic into enriching uranium at levels nearer to weapons grade. Iran insists that the heavy metal will be used for medical purposes only.

 

In 2019 Iran responded to Trump’s so-called “maximum pressure” strategy by gradually increasing its atomic activity, beyond the limits allowed in the nuclear deal. The Islamic Republic started enriching uranium to 60% for the first time on Friday, after the April 11 attack on Natanz, which it blames on Israel.

 

President Joe Biden has pledged to return the U.S. to the accord, but his administration has been reluctant to make any grand gestures or agree to remove sanctions all at once, something Iran insists Washington must do as the party that first violated the deal.

 

While the U.S. is yet to comment on the latest talks, which will resume on Sunday, the European Union and Russia, which along with China are trying help the two countries choreograph the restoration of the deal and full compliance to its terms, echoed Araghchi’s cautious optimism.

 

The 2015 accord between Iran and Germany, China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, United States, together with the European Union, is currently under discussion among representatives in Vienna.

 

The officials are hoping to resuscitate a deal that has been on life support ever since former US President Donald Trump announced Washington's withdrawal.

 

Enrique Mora, who is leading the talks in Vienna on behalf of the EU, said in a tweet that the talks were “intensive" and that “progress has been made in a far from easy task", adding that the group needed to now focus on more detailed work without elaborating.

 

He said it was “key" that all the parties are committed to seeing the U.S. rejoin the accord that former President Donald Trump abandoned in 2018, and that it’s fully implemented by both Washington and Tehran, which significantly ramped up atomic activity in response to tough U.S. sanctions.

 

Russia’s envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mikhail Ulyanov, said that the countries would continue working over the weekend and into next week as they agreed to “not waste time" and reach a successful outcome “as soon as possible".

 

 

 

PUKmedia