US, Iran officials: N-talks nearing conclusion

Talks in Vienna to revive the Iranian nuclear deal are nearing their conclusion, Iranian and US officials have suggested, raising hopes the agreement may soon be restored. Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Bagheri Kani, said on Wednesday that the parties in the Austrian capital are “closer than ever” to reaching a deal.

In Washington, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said the coming days would decide whether the deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), can be restored. “Our assessment is that we are in the midst of the very final stages of, as I said before, a complex negotiation with the key stakeholders here,” Price said.

“This is a decisive period during which we’ll be able to determine whether a mutual return to compliance with the JCPOA is in the offing or if it’s not.” Around the same time that Prince was delivering his remarks from the State Department, Kani wrote on Twitter, “After weeks of intensive talks, we are closer than ever to an agreement; nothing is agreed until everything is agreed, though.”

The Iranian diplomat also called on his negotiating counterparts in Vienna to avoid “intransigence” and learn from the past four years since former US President Donald Trump nixed the deal. “Time for their serious decisions,” he wrote. The 2015 multilateral agreement saw Iran scale back its nuclear programme in exchange for a lifting of sanctions against its economy.

But since Trump withdrew the US from the deal in 2018, Washington has been enforcing a “maximum pressure” campaign of sanctions against Tehran. In response, Iran has ramped up its nuclear programme, including uranium enrichment. Earlier this month, Washington and Tehran resumed indirect talks in Vienna to restore the pact as part of an eighth round of negotiations. Price on Wednesday renewed the US’s call for direct talks to salvage the accord. —Agencies