The United States has joined talks in Vienna aimed at reviving the Iran nuclear deal, which the Trump administration abandoned in 2018.
President Joe Biden has said he wants to return to the landmark accord.
But the six remaining state parties need to find a way for him to lift the sanctions imposed by his predecessor and for Iran to return to the agreed limits on its nuclear programme.
Iran has said it will not meet the US face to face until that happens.
Officials from the UK, France and Germany are acting as intermediaries, shuttling between two hotels in the Austrian capital. Diplomats from the two other remaining parties, Russia and China, are also attending.
Russia’s ambassador to international organisations in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov, said brief preparatory talks held on Tuesday were “successful”, with two expert-level groups on sanctions-lifting and nuclear issues given the task of identifying concrete measures to move forward.
Mr Ulyanov added that the experts began their work immediately, but warned that the restoration of the deal would not happen quickly.
“It will take some time. How long? Nobody knows. The most important thing… is that practical work towards achieving this goal has started.”
US state department spokesman Ned Price also sounded a note of caution ahead of the talks, telling reporters in Washington on Monday: “We don’t anticipate an early or immediate breakthrough, as these discussions, we fully expect, will be difficult.”
The US special envoy for Iran, Robert Malley, said last week that his goal was to “see whether we could agree on a road map back to compliance for both sides”, and that the US knew it was “going to have to lift those sanctions that are inconsistent with the deal that was reached with Iran”.
Source: bbc.com
The post Iran nuclear deal: US joins Vienna talks aimed at reviving accord appeared first on The Chronicle Online.
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