JCPOA Talks’ Success Depends on Other Side’s Determination, Says Iran Deputy FM

Baqeri Kani, who is Iran’s top negotiator in the nuclear negotiations, said in a post on Twitter that the forthcoming talks in the Austrian capital of Vienna will succeed if the P4+1 group of countries have a “firm determination” and stand “practically” ready to bring about a removal of the United States’ sanctions against Iran.

“I stated that success of the future talks depends on other side’s ‘firm determination’ & ‘practical readiness’ to ‘remove sanctions’,” he said in the tweet on Thursday, following meetings with resident ambassadors in Tehran, ambassadors of the Persian Gulf states and ambassadors of Mediterranean and East European countries on Wednesday.

The United States unilaterally abandoned the multilateral nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in 2018 despite Iran’s full compliance with its nuclear undertakings, as repeatedly certified by the UN nuclear agency. The US then unleashed a “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran, which practically deprived the country of all of the deal’s economic benefits.

Iran fully honored its nuclear obligations for an entire year, after which it decided to ramp up its nuclear work as a legal “remedial measure” against the US violation of the deal and the abject failure on the part of the other signatories, the E3 in particular, to safeguard its benefits.

Envoys from Iran and the P4+1 – Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China -- are expected to hold the seventh round of discussions in Vienna on November 29. The negotiations were paused in June, when Iran held its presidential election. Since then, the new Iranian administration has been reviewing the details of the six rounds of discussions held under the previous administration.

The US administration of Joe Biden has said it is willing to rejoin the deal, but it has shown an overriding propensity for maintaining some of the sanctions as a tool of pressure. Tehran insists that all sanctions should first be removed in a verifiable manner before it reverses its remedial measures.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said last week that Tehran and the remaining parties to the JCPOA can reach a “good agreement in a short time” only in case of a “serious and positive” approach to the upcoming talks.

“The Islamic Republic has no intention to be locked in the stalemate remaining from the previous negotiations…I believe that if the opposite sides enter in the Vienna (talks) with a serious and positive approach, it will be possible to achieve a good agreement in a short time,” Amirabdollahian said in a post on Instagram.