Iran will not resume talks with world powers over a return to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear accord until President-elect Ebrahim Raisi’s government is operative, Reuters reported on Thursday.
This probably won’t be until mid-August, a source told the news outlet.
The U.S. State Department confirmed the report, saying that the Iranians had “requested more time to deal with their presidential transition.”
During his daily briefing to reporters on Wednesday, State Department spokesman Ned Price said that the U.S. is “prepared to return to Vienna for a seventh round of talks,” adding, “We understand that the Iranians are still undergoing consultations.”
The sixth round of talks in the Austrian capital took place on June 20, two days after Raisi’s landslide victory in the Iranian elections.
Speaking at a news conference shortly after his win, Raisi said that the U.S. must lift all sanctions and that neither Iran’s ballistic-missile program nor its support for regional militias was up for negotiation.
