EU awaiting US reply to Iran nuclear deal proposals

Iran and the EU are waiting for a response from Washington to new proposals and initiatives aimed at restarting talks on the Iran nuclear deal, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said Monday.

The proposals were discussed during a visit to Tehran by the EU's senior envoy to the talks Enrique Mora last week. Mora held two days of talks with Iranian officials, among them deputy foreign minister Ali Bagheri-Kani, who had been leading the negotiations for the Iranian side until they hit a roadblock in March. The EU's high representative for foreign affairs Josep Borrell said on Mora's return that the talks in Tehran had gone "better than expected" and were "positive enough" to believe that the nuclear negotiations could resume in Vienna in the not-too-distant future.

"Mr Mora arrived in Tehran with a specific agenda," Khatibzadeh said today. "Some solutions were proposed and agreed to. If the US responds… we will be in a position where all parties can return to reach an agreement."

Talks to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal — formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — had been going on for close to a year before stalling in early March just as participants were indicating that a breakthrough was close. The key stumbling block is Tehran's demand that the US State Department removes Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from its list of foreign terrorist organisations. Washington has so far resisted, claiming that the issue falls outside the scope of the JCPOA and should not be linked to the discussions.

"From day one of the talks, every time the US has not wanted to agree to something, it claims that the issue is outside the confines and framework of the JCPOA," Khatibzadeh said. "But what the Islamic Republic of Iran says is clear, all elements of the Trump administration's maximum pressure campaign, all nuts and bolts, need to go."

The collapse of the nuclear deal — brought about by former US president Donald Trump's unilateral exit and subsequent reimposition of sanctions on Tehran — at one point removed 2mn b/d of Iranian crude and condensate from export markets. Iran's oil exports have recovered a little since then to average around 760,000 b/d in January-April this year, according to Argus tracking. A restoration of the deal in its original form could add another 1.3mn-1.4mn b/d of Iranian crude to global supply within 6-9 months of its implementation.

By Nader Itayim