Iran and officials said Monday that Iran and world powers have made some progress with the revival of the 2015 nuclear power that the United States later abandoned. An interim agreement can be a way to gain time for a lasting settlement.
Tehran and the authorities have been meeting in Vienna since early April to work on steps to be taken, including US sanctions and Iran’s transgressions, to fully comply with Tehran and Washington.
“We are on the right track and some progress has been made, but that does not mean that the talks in Vienna have reached the final stage,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said on a weekly basis. news conference in Tehran said.
“Practical solutions are still a long way off, but we have moved from general words to agreement on specific steps towards the goal,” Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations Security Agency (IAEA), wrote on Twitter on Monday .
The government of US President Joe Biden, who took office in January to rejoin the agreement, said he was ready to lift “all sanctions not in conflict” with the agreement, but not expressed what measures this means.
Iran’s clerical establishment has said it will not return to strict compliance with the 2015 agreement unless all sanctions reinstated or added by former President Donald Trump after he swore in in 2018 are revoked.
Diplomats say the sequence of steps from each side could provide a solution, while Iranian officials told Reuters that the high-interest talks in Vienna could yield an interim agreement to give diplomacy a lasting settlement.
“The deadline for May is approaching … What is being discussed in Vienna for the short term are the main lines of an interim agreement to give all parties more time to resolve complex technical issues,” an Iranian official said. .
He referred to a law passed by the hard-line parliament of Iran that obliges the government to tighten its core position if sanctions are not lifted.
The law put an end to UN nuclear inspections on February 21, but Tehran and the IAEA agreed to continue the “necessary” monitoring for up to three months.
Abbas Araqchi, Iran’s largest nuclear negotiator, told Iranian state media that there was no discussion of an interim agreement or similar topics in the Vienna talks.
However, another Iranian official said that if a political agreement was reached on technical steps to remove all sanctions, Tehran could suspend enrichment to 20% pure in exchange for the release of blocked Iranian funds in other countries.
Iran says $ 20 billion of its oil revenues have been frozen since 2018 in countries such as South Korea, Iraq and China under the US sanctions regime.
“The unlocking of Iran’s funds is a good start. An interim agreement gives us time to work on lifting all sanctions against Iran,” the second Iranian official said.
A State Department spokesman asked for comment, saying talks in Vienna were ongoing and that the US team had “examined concrete approaches to the steps Iran and the US will have to take to return to mutual compliance. ‘
“The discussions were thorough and thoughtful, if indirect … There were no breakthroughs, but we did not expect this process to be easy or quick,” he added, adding that the delegations were expected at some point return home for consultations. but he did not know when.
In addition to the sanctions that were reintroduced in 2018, Trump added new ones, including classifying Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist group and appointing the Iranian central bank over allegations of terrorist financing.
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“I think both parties are really interested in reaching an agreement, and that they have moved from general to more focused issues, which are clearly sanction lifting on the one hand, and nuclear implementation issues on the other,” he said. said .
Iran has violated the core limits of the agreement since Washington withdrew, increasing uranium enrichment to 20% purity, which is an important step toward bomb-grade material.
The 2015 treaty limited the level of enrichment purity to 3.67% – suitable for the generation of civilian nuclear energy.
Tehran, complicating Biden’s bid to rejoin the deal, last week launched enrichment to 60% purity at its main plant in Natanz, following a damaging explosion blamed on Israel’s sabotage. oppose diplomacy against Iran.
About 90% tear purity is required for a nuclear explosive. Tehran has repeatedly denied using enrichment, although Western intelligence services and the IAEA believe it once had a secret nuclear bomb program that was lifted in 2003.
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