TEHRAN, June 28(ABC): Iran and the United States plan to resume indirect talks this week in Qatar, in a fresh bid to revive the landmark 2015 nuclear deal, both sides said Monday.
The talks will be separate from broader EU-mediated negotiations in Vienna between Iran and major powers, the bloc’s top diplomat Josep Borrell said Saturday in Tehran.
The nuclear deal has been hanging by a thread since 2018, when then US president Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from it and began reimposing harsh economic sanctions on America’s arch enemy.
US President Joe Biden’s administration has sought to return to the agreement, saying it would be the best path ahead with the Islamic republic, although it has voiced growing pessimism in recent weeks.
Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said Monday the talks would focus on the lifting of US sanctions and be held “in a Persian Gulf country in the coming days, later this week”.
The US State Department said the talks would take place in Qatar’s capital Doha.
Iran’s news agency, quoting an unnamed foreign ministry source, reported that Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri would visit Qatar on Tuesday for “negotiations on lifting sanctions” and that the US-Iranian indirect talks would be held there.
A State Department spokesperson said the United States was also “grateful to our EU partners, who continue to convey messages and are working to advance these negotiations”.
“We are prepared to immediately conclude and implement the deal we negotiated in Vienna for mutual return to full implementation of the JCPOA,” he said, referring to the deal’s formal name, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
“But for that, Iran needs to decide to drop their additional demands that go beyond the JCPOA.”