EU chief heads to Tehran in effort to revive nuke talks

EU foreign affairs representative Josep Borrell is travelling to Tehran this evening as the bloc steps up its diplomatic efforts to restart talks between Iran and the US to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

The EU said today that Borrell is scheduled to hold meetings with Iran's foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and several other Iranian officials in the Iranian capital over the course of today, 24 June, and tomorrow "as part of the ongoing efforts to bring the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) back into full implementation".

Iran's foreign ministry also confirmed the visit, saying that the discussions would centre on "the latest status of talks to lift the sanctions," but also "bilateral relations" and some other "regional and international issues".

The EU has acted as an intermediary in the indirect negotiations between Iran and the US to revive the nuclear deal since they began in Vienna more than a year ago.

But the talks ground to a halt in early March, just as all parties to the negotiations were saying that an agreement was close. Iran's foreign ministry at the time said a deal was "above 98pc" done.

The process initially hit a roadblock after Russia demanded a waiver from sanctions imposed on it in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine, to allow it to continue its nuclear co-operation with Iran. Moscow withdrew that demand soon after, but by that point further cracks had appeared.

Tehran has for months insisted that the US remove the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) from its list of foreign terrorist organisations (FTO) — something the US has repeatedly said it is not prepared to do as it falls outside the purview of the JCPOA.

Amir-Abdollahian last month acknowledged the demand, but insisted that there was more to the ongoing deadlock than just that issue. He said the US had not yet given guarantees to Tehran that it would fully benefit from the economic gains promised to it under the JCPOA.

A restoration of the deal in its original form could add another 1.3mn-1.4mn b/d of Iranian crude to global supplies within 6-9 months of its implementation, which, given the current high oil price and dwindling global spare capacity, would prove a welcome boost to consumer countries struggling with accelerating inflation and stuttering economic growth.

Diplomatic overdrive

The announcement of Borrell's swiftly-planned visit comes on the back of a flurry of diplomatic activity around the nuclear deal yesterday, which saw Iran's foreign minister speak with Borrell, as well as his Chinese and Omani counterparts by telephone, and meet with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Tehran.

Borrell, as well as the EU's deputy foreign affairs secretary Enrique Mora, later met the US state department's special Iran envoy Rob Malley in Brussels.

Iran on 8 June disabled two cameras that served the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) monitoring of its compliance with the JCPOA, for which it was censured by the IAEA. Tehran labelled the censure a hasty and political move and proceeded to remove another 27 IAEA cameras from its facilities.

The IAEA director-general Rafael Grossi warned soon after that this meant the window of opportunity for the agency to maintain "continuity of knowledge" about Iran's nuclear activities was now "very small".

By Nader Itayim