EU proposes ‘final’ text to resuscitate Iran nuclear deal

A general view shows the Palais Coburg where closed-door nuclear talks are taking place with Iran in Vienna, Austria, August 4, 2022. REUTERS/Lisa Leutner

DUBAI/WASHINGTON, Aug 8 (Reuters) – The European Union said on Monday it had tabled “final” text to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal as four days of indirect talks between U.S. officials and Iranians ended in Vienna.

“What can be negotiated has been negotiated, and it is now in a final text. However, behind every technical question and every paragraph is a political decision that needs to be taken in capitals,” the policy chief tweeted. Foreign Affairs of the EU, Josep Borrell.

“If these answers are positive, then we can sign this agreement,” he added as the EU, Iran and the United States prepared to leave Vienna.

Earlier, a senior EU official told reporters that no further changes could be made to the text, which has been under negotiation for 15 months, and said he expected a final decision from the parties in “very, very few weeks”.

“It’s a blanket proposition…You can’t agree with page 20 and disagree with page 50. You have to say yes or no,” he said.

While Washington has said it is ready to quickly reach an agreement to revive the deal based on the EU proposals, Iranian officials said they would convey their “additional views and considerations” to the European Union, which is coordinating the talks, after consultations in Tehran. .

Iran’s Nournews website, affiliated with the country’s Supreme National Security Council which takes decisions in the nuclear talks, said the EU, as the coordinator of the talks, had no power to “present its proposals as final text”.

“The goal is to force Iran to accept the text… under pressure… when Iran, as a party to the negotiations, does not accept it as the final text, no other authority can speak about the finalizing the text, “It said.

Iran has made demands that the United States and other Western powers consider beyond the scope of reviving the deal, such as insisting that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) drop its claims. . Iran has not fully explained the traces of uranium at several undeclared sites.

Each side sought to shift the responsibility to the other to compromise.

“They (the Iranians) repeatedly say that they are ready to return to the mutual implementation of the JCPOA (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action). Let’s see if their actions match their words,” a spokesperson said. word of the US State Department.

Under the 2015 deal, Iran curbed its nuclear program in exchange for relief from US, EU and UN sanctions.

But former US President Donald Trump reneged on the nuclear deal in 2018 and reinstated tough US sanctions, prompting Tehran to start violating the deal’s nuclear limits about a year later.

The pact seemed poised to be revived in March, but 11 months of indirect talks between Tehran and US President Joe Biden’s administration in Vienna were turned upside down mainly by Iran’s insistence that Washington withdraw its body from elite Revolutionary Guards, from the US List of Foreign Terrorist Organizations.

Reuters, citing an Iranian official and a European official, reported in June that Tehran had dropped the request.

A senior Iranian official told Reuters on Monday that “apart from Tehran’s request for the closure of the IAEA investigation, several other issues still remained to be discussed.”

Iran has also sought guarantees that no future US president will back down from the deal if it is revived, as Trump has done. But Biden cannot provide such ironclad assurances because the deal is a political agreement rather than a legally binding treaty.

Iranian state media hinted at the issue on Monday.

“The final agreement must guarantee the rights and interests of the Iranian people and ensure the effective and stable lifting of sanctions,” Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said in a call to Borrell, state media reported.

Reporting by Parisa Hafezi in Dubai; Arshad Mohammed in Washington; Written by Arshad Mohammed and Parisa Hafezi Editing Alistair Bell

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