West asks whether Iran is serious or stalling a deal

IRAN and world powers planned to meet in Vienna yesterday to try to salvage their 2015 nuclear deal, but with Tehran sticking to its tough stance and Western powers increasingly frustrated, hopes of a breakthrough appear slim.

Diplomats say time is running low to resurrect the pact, which then-US President Donald Trump abandoned in 2018, angering Iran and dismaying the other powers involved – Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia.

Six rounds of indirect talks were held between April and June. The new round begins after a hiatus triggered by the election of hardline cleric Ebrahim Raisi in June as Iran’s president.

Tehran’s new negotiating team has set out demands that US and European diplomats consider unrealistic, Western diplomats say.

“Our demands are clear. Other parties and especially Americans should decide whether they want this deal to be revived or not. They abandoned the pact, so they should return to it and lift all sanctions,” an Iranian official close to the talks told Reuters.

Iran’s demands include the dropping of all US and EU sanctions imposed since 2017, including those unrelated to Iran’s nuclear programme, in a verifiable process.

Iran’s foreign ministry ruled out the possibility of direct meeting between Iranian and US officials in Vienna. In parallel, Tehran’s conflicts with the UN atomic watchdog, which monitors the nuclear programme, have festered.

Iran has pressed ahead with its uranium enrichment programme and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says its inspectors have been treated roughly and refused access to reinstall monitoring cameras at a site it deems essential to reviving the deal.

“If Iran thinks it can use this time to build more leverage and then come back and say they want something better, it simply won’t work. We and our partners won’t go for it,” US envoy Robert Malley told BBC Sounds.

He warned that Washington would be ready to ramp up pressure on Tehran if talks collapse.

Iranian officials have insisted in the run-up yesterday that their focus is purely the lifting of sanctions rather than nuclear issues.

Highlighting that, its 40-strong delegation mostly includes economic officials.

“To ensure any forthcoming agreement is ironclad, the West needs to pay a price for having failed to uphold its part of the bargain. As in any business, a deal is a deal and breaking it has consequences,” Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, Ali Bagheri Kani, said in defiant column in the Financial Times on Sunday.

“The principle of ‘mutual compliance’ cannot form a proper base for negotiations since it was the US government which unilaterally left the deal.”

Diplomats have said Washington has suggested negotiating an openended interim accord with Tehran as long as a permanent deal is not achieved.

Failure to strike a deal could also prompt reaction from Israel which has said military options would be on the table.

“The talks can’t last forever. There is the obvious need to speed up the process,” Moscow’s envoy, Mikhail Ulyanov, said on Twitter.