Talks on the return by Iran and the United States to compliance with the 2015 Iran nuclear accord "are not going well" in the sense that the United States does not yet have a path back into the deal, the U.S. national security adviser said on Friday (December 17), Reuters reports.
Prior to Friday’s meeting, Iran’s chief negotiator, Ali Bagheri Kani, said in a tweet that “good progress” was made during the week and an eighth round will be held after a short break, Al Jazeera reports.
Iran has said it wants all sanctions, imposed as part of the “maximum pressure” campaign by the US, lifted, a position the Western counterparts regard as maximalist.
Iran also wants a period to verify the lifting of sanctions, and guarantees the US will not renege on the accord again – demands that it wishes to present as part of a third text when the initial two are agreed upon.
Negotiators at indirect talks between Iran and the United States have just weeks to reach an agreement on rescuing the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, European powers and the talks' coordinator said as negotiations adjourned on Friday for at least 10 days. Officials said Iran had requested the break, while Western powers had planned on staying until Tuesday, Reuters reports.
The talks have made little discernible progress since they resumed more than two weeks ago for the first time since Iran's hardline president, Ebrahim Raisi, was elected in June.
Tehran's envoys have sought changes to the outline of an agreement that had taken shape in six previous rounds of talks, leaving the negotiations largely deadlocked while Western powers warn that time is running out to rein in Iran's fast-advancing nuclear activities.
Speaking to a U.S. Council on Foreign Relations webinar, Sullivan said the negotiations have "proven more difficult over the course of this year than we would have liked to have seen" as Iran has "raced" its nuclear program forward.
Washington has conveyed through the Europeans and directly to Iran its "alarm" over the "forward progress" it has made, he continued, declining to elaborate on the details of those messages.
The 2015 deal lifted sanctions against Tehran in return for tough restrictions on Iran's nuclear activities aimed at extending the time Tehran would need to obtain enough fissile material for a nuclear bomb if it chose to - so-called breakout time - to at least a year from roughly two to three months.
In 2018 then-President Donald Trump, who vehemently opposed the deal, pulled the United States out of the accord and re-imposed punishing U.S. sanctions against Tehran. Iran responded by breaching many of the deal's nuclear restrictions and pressing ahead further with its atomic activities.
Most experts now say breakout time is less than it was before the deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Iran says its atomic aims are entirely peaceful.
Iranian officials did not explain why they had requested a break other than to say there would be consultations in Tehran.
