The Joint Commission of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), consisting of Iran and five world powers (Russia, the UK, Germany, China and France), will resume the talks on reviving the nuclear deal in Vienna on Monday, Trend reports citing TASS.
This is going to be the seventh round of negotiations, which were interrupted this summer due to the Iranian elections.
The talks will take place at the level of Political Directors in the Palais Coburg behind closed doors. The meeting will be chaired by Deputy Secretary General and Political Director of the European External Action Service (EEAS) Enrique Mora. The Russian delegation is headed by Permanent Representative of Russia to International Organizations in Vienna Mikhail Ulyanov, the new Iranian delegation is led by Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri. The US is not going to partake in the meeting since it withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018. However, US Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley has to attend some separate consultations with other participants in the nuclear deal.
According to the Iranian side, it is necessary to focus on lifting the US sanctions against Iran. As Bagheri emphasized, the nuclear deal needs to provide guarantees that Iran will benefit from it.
The Russian envoy stated that Moscow expected the new round of Vienna talks to be successful. "Russia enters into negotiations, hoping that this work is going to be successful and will be finished at a reasonable time. We do not want to waste time," Ulyanov noted.
The seventh round of talks
Although the significant progress has been made during the Vienna talks, the sides have not managed to achieve their main goal: to fully reinstate the original Iran nuclear deal. Over the past six rounds, the parties decided which US sanctions against Iran should be lifted and almost agreed on a list of Iran’s steps to return to the nuclear deal obligations.
The informal consultations between the participants took place last weekend.
From April to June 2021, six rounds of the Vienna talks were held between the JCPOA member states (Iran, Russia, the UK, Germany, China, France) and the US on the reviving the Iranian nuclear deal in its original form.