The leaders of Britain, France, Germany and the United States will hold four-way talks Tuesday on Iran's nuclear programme, the French presidency said, with Tehran's oil exports as one of the issues to be raised. It comes as Iran's foreign ministry and the EU's chief diplomat flagged the resumption of nuclear talks between Washington and Tehran.
The talks between EU leaders and the US will come on the sidelines of the G7 gathering of the world's top industrialised powers, which will also discuss Iran's nuclear ambitions at a dinner during a session on foreign policies.
Among topics to be broached are the "question of oil" and "a willingness to stop proliferation", said a senior French official, without giving further details.
Iran "will be raised in the 'quad', we have a meeting in this format on Tuesday morning," said the official.
Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said Saturday that "we are prepared to resume talks in the coming days. What is important for Iran is to fully receive the economic benefits of the 2015 accord," adding that he had held a "long but positive meeting" with EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell.
White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said he could not speak on the status of the negotiations. "But there's nothing changed about our position that a nuclear deal is the best way to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear weapons status," Kirby told reporters traveling aboard Air Force One. "We want to get them back into compliance."
The pact appeared close to being revived in March when the EU – which is coordinating negotiations – invited foreign ministers representing the accord's parties to Vienna to finalise an agreement after 11 months of indirect talks between Tehran and President Joe Biden's administration.
But the talks have since been bogged down, chiefly over Tehran's insistence that Washington remove the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), its elite security force, from the US Foreign Terrorist Organization list.
"We are expected to resume talks in the coming days and break the impasse. It has been three months and we need to accelerate the work. I am very happy about the decision that has been made in Tehran and Washington," Borrell told a televised news conference in Tehran.
Two officials, one Iranian and one European, told Reuters ahead of Borrell's trip that "two issues including one on sanctions remained to be resolved", comments that Iran's Foreign Ministry has neither confirmed nor denied. "We agreed on resumption of negotiations between Iran and US in the coming days, facilitated by my team, to solve the last outstanding issues," Borrell said.
In 2018, then-U.S. President Donald Trump pulled out of the deal, under which Iran agreed to curbs on its nuclear programme in return for relief from economic sanctions. The U.S. withdrawal and its reimposition of crippling sanctions prompted Iran to begin violating its core nuclear limits about a year later.
Western powers fear Iran is getting closer to being able to produce a nuclear bomb if it decided to, though Iran says its intentions are entirely peaceful.
Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, which makes the decisions in the nuclear talks, told Borrell that Iran will further develop its nuclear programme until the West changes its "illegal behaviour". "Iran's retaliatory actions in the nuclear sector are merely legal and rational responses to U.S. unilateralism and European inaction and will continue as long as the West's illegal practices are not changed," Shamkhani said, without elaborating.
And despite the imminent resumption of talks, Borrell appeared to play down the possibility of a quick deal. "I cannot predict ... We are pushing for it. I appreciate the goodwill from the Iranian side. There is also goodwill from the American side," Borrell said in a news conference on an EU website.
(FRANCE 24 with REUTERS and AFP)
