Talks on reviving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers, will resume on Nov. 29 in Vienna, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator said on Wednesday, Reuters reported on Wednesday.
“We agreed to start the negotiations aiming at removal of unlawful & inhumane sanctions on 29 November in Vienna,” Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani, who was appointed the regime’s chief negotiator last month, posted on Twitter.
Negotiations between Iran and six powers, including the United States, wrapped up in June, and no date had been set for a seventh round of talks until now. They had been put on hold until after the Iranian presidential election on June 18, which ushered in hardline candidate Ebrahim Raisi.
"[W]e do welcome the E.U.’s announcement that they have coordinated with all participants and that talks on a mutual return to compliance with the JCPOA will resume ... we believe it remains possible to quickly reach and implement an understanding on a mutual return to compliance ... by closing the relatively small number of issues that remained outstanding at the end of June, when the 6th round concluded,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said in his daily briefing on Nov. 3.
“We believe that if the Iranians are serious, we can manage to do that in relatively short order,” he added.
Price’s comment comes on the heels of an Oct. 31 joint statement by the United States, the United Kingdom Germany and France calling on Iran to return to the JCPOA.
“We are convinced that it is possible to quickly reach and implement an understanding on return to full compliance and to ensure for the long term that Iran’s nuclear program is exclusively for peaceful purposes,” the four nations said in the White House-issued statement.
