Iran talks break for New Year, set to resume 3 January

Negotiations to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal will resume on 3 January after breaking up today ahead of the New Year holidays.

An eighth round of talks began in Vienna just three days ago, with several stakeholders optimistic that a "positive result" could be reached in the coming days and weeks.

"Informal consultations still continue within the framework of the Vienna talks," Russia's envoy to the talks Mikhail Ulyanov said on Twitter. "But the time has come to take a New Year break. The eighth round of negotiations on the restoration of the [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] JCPOA will resume on Monday 3 January."

The US unilaterally withdrew from the JCPOA during former president's Donald Trump's tenure in 2018, leading to crippling economic sanctions being reimposed on Iran's oil sector and wider economy. The previous round of talks to restore the deal, which were the first after a more-than-five-month hiatus caused by a change in government in Iran, ended on 15 December.

The negotiations are being conducted between the US and Iran through intermediaries. The two have yet to meet face-to-face since the talks resumed under US president Joe Biden in April. His predecessor's decision to pull the US out of the deal saw Tehran gradually dial back compliance with its own JCPOA commitments.

US officials say they remain concerned that Iran's progress in its nuclear programme has brought Tehran closer to a theoretical threshold of having enough enriched uranium for a functional nuclear weapon. Iran has long denied that it has any intention of building or possessing nuclear weapons.

A restoration of the JCPOA in its original form could add up to 1.4mn b/d of Iranian crude to global supply. Iran's foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said on 27 December that any breakthrough in the negotiations would need to include guarantees that Tehran will be able to sell its oil and repatriate its revenues freely.

Argus estimates that Iran's crude production slipped by 10,000 b/d month-on-month to 2.46mn b/d in November, well below the 3.8mn b/d that it was producing in early 2018 before the reimposition of US sanctions.

By Nader Itayim