EU envoy to talks says it's crunchtime for Iran, US to resolve thorny issues

VIENNA－Iran and the United States must take a political decision within days to prevent the failure of indirect talks on reviving the 2015 nuclear deal after 11 months of negotiations, said Enrique Mora, the European Union's top envoy for the discussions in Vienna.

The envoy, who coordinates the talks in the Austrian capital, tweeted: "Just to clarify. There are no longer 'expert level talks.' Nor 'formal meetings.' It is time, in the next few days, for political decisions to end the#ViennaTalks. The rest is noise."

Mora's Twitter post came as Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said in Teheran on Monday that few differences remain between Iran and the West.

"If the US approach is reasonable, the quick agreement is available," he said during a weekly news conference, stressing that Iran will never accept or adhere to a deadline for negotiations.

"Asking for a direct negotiation only makes sense if we know the reason for the meeting," he said, adding that "so far, we have not seen any change in the behavior of the United States, and the maximum pressure on the Iranian people has continued".

Referring to recent cooperation agreements reached between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency, the spokesman said that a trip by the IAEA director-general to Iran at the weekend was undertaken within a technical framework, and within the format of the Vienna talks.

Also on Monday, Iran's chief negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani left Vienna for consultations in Teheran, and a report in Iranian media said that experts would further pursue talks in Vienna.

In Washington, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters the US and its allies are "getting closer" to a nuclear deal with Iran but "important components" still need to be decided. She did not elaborate.

Iran and the remaining parties to the 2015 nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, have been negotiating in Vienna in an effort to settle disputes about the revival of the pact. The US withdrew from the agreement in 2018.

Parties involved in the talks between Teheran and world powers in Austria had said last week that a deal was expected to be reached within days.

European negotiators from France, Britain, and Germany had already temporarily left the talks as they believed they had gone as far as they could go and it was now up to the two main protagonists to agree on outstanding issues, including the extent to which sanctions on Iran would be rolled back.

Over the weekend, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow wanted a guarantee from the US that its trade, investment and military-technical cooperation with Iran would not be hindered by sanctions imposed on Russia since its military action in Ukraine.

On Monday, Lavrov insisted on Moscow's demand by telling Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian in a phone conversation that the revived nuclear deal should not allow for any discrimination between participants.

Sticking points

Diplomats have said that several issues still needed to be resolved in the talks to revive the nuclear pact, under which Teheran limited its nuclear program in return for relief from sanctions imposed by the US, the European Union and the United Nations. But when then-US president Donald Trump abandoned the nuclear pact in 2018, he reimposed harsh sanctions that squeezed Teheran's oil exports.

Iran's top security official, Ali Shamkhani, called on Washington on Monday to make political decisions.

"Priority of Iranian negotiators is to resolve remaining issues that are considered (a) … red line. Rapid access to a strong deal requires new initiatives from all parties," Shamkhani tweeted.

An Iran analyst at consultancy Eurasia Group, Henry Rome, said the talks are "certainly in a very delicate point".

Agencies - Xinhua