US ready for agreement over nuclear deal: Iran minister

Iran's foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said on Sunday that his Iraqi counterpart carried a message from the US expressing readiness for an agreement over the nuclear deal.

"[Iraqi foreign minister Fuad Hussein] carried the message that the American side is ready for an agreement," with Iran on the revival of the 2015 nuclear deal, the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Abdollahian said in an interview with Iran's Al-Alam TV which was carried by Iran's state-owned news agency Irna. He claimed that Hussein returned from an earlier visit to Washington with a message for Tehran.

Abdollahian was in Baghdad last week for talks with senior Iraqi officials, including Hussein, in a sign that Iraq is playing an intermediary role between the US and Tehran.

"We have always welcomed the path of diplomacy and negotiation and never distanced ourselves from negotiation," Abdollahian added.

He said that Iran is ready to work towards an agreement on the JCPOA and return of all signatories to their commitments under the deal within the framework of negotiations carried out in Vienna, Austria. He also referred to indirect negotiations, based on messages exchanged between Tehran and Washington through "non-paper contacts".

Abdollahian stressed that any such agreement must guarantee the interests of all parties, while also respecting the "red lines" of the Islamic Republic.

"If the American side acts realistically within the framework of the message it has sent and avoids repeating its previous hypocritical media remarks, we will not be far from an agreement," Amirabdollahian said. The foreign minister said that the problem is that the US always issues "contradictory diplomatic and media messages".

Nothing new

This is not the first time the Iranian side expresses its readiness for the resumption of nuclear talks. Iran has been keener than the US and the European Union on resuming talks, as the country faces increased isolation and suffered further currency devaluation in recent days.

The US said in January that diplomacy with the Islamic Republic is "not dead" even though negotiations have broken down.

But this came after the White House reiterated several times in recent months that it sees no prospect for the JCPOA to be revived soon, particularly after footage of US president Joe Biden describing the deal as "dead" was released last month.

Indirect talks between Iran and the US to restore the nuclear deal broke down mid-2022, over Iranian concerns over the extent of the sanctions relief the country would get under a renewed deal.

And the possibility of restarting negotiations was further complicated by Iran's heavy-handed approach to quelling the unrest sparked by the death of a woman in September while in police custody, in addition to it supplying Russia with drones, which Moscow deployed in its war with Ukraine.

Meanwhile, the board of governors of the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), will hold its first meeting of the year on 6 March in Vienna. This comes after the organisation's general director Rafael Grossi said in January that Iran has amassed enough nuclear material for "several nuclear weapons".

By Bachar Halabi