Iran and world powers have made some progress in reviving the 2015 nuclear accord, which was later abandoned by the United States, and an interim deal could be a way to buy time for a lasting settlement, Iranian officials said Monday.
Tehran and the powers have been meeting in Vienna since early April to work on the steps to be taken, in terms of US sanctions and Iran’s violations of the deal, to bring Tehran and Washington back into full compliance.
“We are on the right track and some progress has been made, but this does not mean that the talks in Vienna have reached the final stage,” said Saeed Khatibzadeh, spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, at a weekly press conference in Tehran.
“Practical solutions are still a long way off, but we’ve moved from general words to agreeing on specific steps towards the goal,” Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia’s ambassador to the UN’s nuclear watchdog (IAEA), wrote on Twitter on Monday.
US President Joe Biden’s administration, who took office in January and pledged to rejoin the deal, has said it is ready to lift “any sanctions that conflict” with the deal, but has not specified which ones measures it means.
The Iranian administrative establishment has said it will not return to strict adherence to the 2015 agreement unless all sanctions re-imposed or added by former President Donald Trump after he left the accord in 2018 are first lifted.
Diplomats say successive steps by both sides could provide a solution, while Iranian officials told Reuters that the high-stakes talks in Vienna could result in an interim deal to allow for diplomacy on a lasting settlement.
“The May deadline is approaching … What is being discussed in Vienna in the near future is the outline of an interim deal to give all parties more time to resolve complicated technical issues,” said an Iranian official.
He was referring to a law passed by Iran’s hardline-dominated parliament requiring the government to tighten its nuclear stance if sanctions are not lifted.
The law mandated an end to short-term UN nuclear inspections starting February 21, but Tehran and the IAEA agreed to continue the “necessary” monitoring for up to three months.
Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, Abbas Araqchi, told Iranian state media that “there is 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 lift all sanctions, Tehran could suspend enrichment to 20% purity in exchange for a release of blocked Iranian funds in other countries.
Iran says $ 20 billion of its oil revenues have been frozen since 2018 in countries like South Korea, Iraq and China under the US sanctions regime.
“Unblocking Iran’s funds is a good start. An interim deal will give us time to work on lifting all sanctions against Iran,” said the second Iranian official.
Asked for comment, a US State Department spokesman said that talks were continuing in Vienna and that the US team has “explored concrete approaches regarding the steps both Iran and the US should take to return to mutual compliance “.
“The discussions were thorough and thoughtful, albeit indirectly … There have been no breakthroughs, but we did not expect this process to be easy or quick,” he added, saying that delegations were expected to ever would return home for consultation. but he did not know when.
In addition to sanctions re-imposed in 2018, Trump has added new sanctions, including classifying Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist group and designating Iran’s Central Bank over terrorist financing allegations.
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“I think both sides are really interested in reaching an agreement, and they have moved from general to more focused issues, clearly lifting sanctions on the one hand and nuclear implementation issues on the other,” he said. .
Iran has violated the nuclear limits of the deal since Washington withdrew and recently increased uranium enrichment to 20% nuclear fuel purity, an important step toward bomb-grade material.
The 2015 pact limits the level of enrichment purity to 3.67% – suitable for the generation of civil nuclear energy.
To complicate Biden’s goal of re-joining the deal, Tehran last week launched an enrichment of up to 60% purity at its main Natanz plant after a damaging explosion there blamed for sabotage by Israel, which opposes against diplomacy with Iran.
About 90% fuel purity is required for a nuclear explosive, Tehran has repeatedly denied seeking to make enrichment with weapons, though Western intelligence agencies and the IAEA believe it once had a hidden nuclear bomb program that was shelved in 2003.
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