The government of the president of the United States, Joe Biden, offered on Thursday formally to restart negotiations with Iran, after former president Donald Trump will withdraw the country in 2018 from the nuclear agreement with Tehran. The US would accept an invitation from the high representative of the European Union to attend the meeting of the 5 + 1 group and Iran to discuss the diplomatic channel on Iran’s nuclear program, said State Department spokesman Ned Price. , in a statement sent to various media. The CNN television network and The New York Times had advanced that Washington had formally offered to restart the nuclear talks with Iran.
Precisely this Thursday, the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, held a telematic meeting with three European Foreign Ministers, to whom he pointed out that the 2015 nuclear agreement was a key achievement of multilateral diplomacy. Blinken met virtually with his French counterparts, Jean-Yves Le Drian; Briton, Dominic Raab, and German, Heiko Maas, to talk about Iran. During the meeting, the four officials asked the Islamic Republic to respect its commitments on uranium enrichment and not to limit international inspections to its atomic facilities. They also warned Iran that reducing collaboration with the inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) would be “dangerous”, so they called on that country to take into account the impact of such a “serious” measure.
Apart from the US and Iran, the 2015 agreement was signed by the European Union, Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom, and Germany.
Following Washington’s withdrawal from that pact in 2018 and the Trump administration’s re-imposition of all economic sanctions on Tehran, the agreement weakened.
Iran began a year later to gradually reduce its commitments and recently, in clear violation of the limits of that pact, began to enrich uranium to a purity of 20% and to produce metallic uranium. The arrival of the Democrat Joe Biden to the White House, on January 20, made confidence in a reduction in tensions after having expressed during his campaign his desire to reintegrate the US into the agreement as long as Iran once again fulfilled its obligations. On February 7, Biden stated in an interview that he would not lift sanctions on Iran unless it stopped enriching uranium.
On the same day, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said Tehran will return to accord with Western powers when the US lifts sanctions. The Joe Biden government has brought the US back to the negotiating table with Iran. His Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, participated in a telematic meeting with his counterparts from the United Kingdom, France, and Germany in which he assured that the Biden Administration would accept an invitation from the European Union to discuss the recovery of the nuclear agreement reached with the Iranian regime. in 2015 and that was shipwrecked during the presidency of Donald Trump.
Spanish Enrique Mora, Deputy Secretary-General for Political Affairs of the European External Action Service, assured on his Twitter account that the 2015 nuclear agreement between the P5 + 1 (USA, Russia, China, UK, France, and Germany) and Iran are “at a critical juncture”, with “intense talks between all participants and the US” taking place. and that he was “ready” to invite them to an “informal meeting to discuss next steps.”
From Washington, the main spokesman for the State Department, Ned Price, assured that the Biden Administration welcomed the proposal. “USA. will accept the invitation of the High Representative of the European Union (also Spanish Josep Borrell) to participate in a meeting with the P5 + 1 and Iran to discuss a diplomatic route from now on regarding Iran’s nuclear program.
The original agreement, signed in the final stretch of the presidency of Barack Obama – with Biden as vice president – established that Iran would get rid of 97% of its nuclear fuel, limit its production capacity in such a way that it would take at least a year to manufacture a nuclear weapon and would be subject to periodic inspection by international agents. In return, foreign powers – the United States. included – they would lift the sanctions regime against the economy of the Islamic country. In his rise to power, Trump described it as the “worst agreement in history” and, as soon as he arrived at the White House, he denounced that Tehran failed to comply with it and recovered the economic sanctions.
It is unclear whether Iran will show the same willingness to join the negotiating table. Like the whiting that bites its tail, Washington and Tehran accuse each other of breaching the agreement first and that will be the first obstacle to leave behind to recover the negotiations. During the campaign, Biden assured that his Administration would withdraw the sanctions if Iran complied with the agreement as it did until 2019. But Tehran believes that the US breached the agreement before and that it will have to lift the sanctions so that they also comply. In a message on Twitter, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said he depended on Americans and Europeans “to end Trump’s legacy of economic terrorism against Iran.
After Blinken met with its European counterparts, the group issued a statement in which it defended that the new “opportunity” that opens up to refloat the agreement and affirmed its “shared objective” that Iran “return to full compliance with its commitments »For the US to do the same. Another of the participants in the agreement, Russia, demanded that the US and Iran approach positions to recover the agreement. “Children’s disputes over who should take the first step are counterproductive,” said Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia’s ambassador to international organizations in Vienna, including the International Atomic Energy Agency, which oversees the deal. “The process must be carefully timed.
A decisive moment for the resumption of talks will be this weekend: on Sunday, February 21, the deadline established by Iran will be met by which will not allow the entry of international inspectors and will increase the production of enriched uranium if the United States does not. lift sanctions and return to the agreement. Two senior officials from the US State Department who appeared before journalists assured that, together with their European partners, they demanded that Iran not comply with this threat to return to negotiations. As a gesture of goodwill, Washington will reopen the entrance to Iranian diplomats so that they can go to the United Nations headquarters in New York and has withdrawn the demand for the international community to comply with the sanctions regime against Tehran.
All this is not in itself an advance,” defended one of the top US diplomats. “Until we sit down to negotiate, nothing will happen.”The reopening of the diplomatic channel with Iran has not been well received, as expected, by the Republicans in the US “It is worrying that the Biden Administration is already making concessions in an apparent attempt to recover the disastrous agreement with Iran” criticized Congressman Michael McCaul, the highest-ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “We need to secure a better deal that keeps Americans safe from the wide range of evil threats from Iran.
