Revived Nuclear Deal Close but New Round of Talks ‘Inevitable’: Iranian Lawmaker

Fada-Hossein Maleki, a senior Iranian legislator, said Saturday that although Iran and the P5+1 countries that are party to the Vienna talks on reviving the 2015 nuclear deal are close to reaching an agreement, a new round of talks is necessary to close the deal, the Iran Front Page news website reported. Maleki, a member of the Iranian Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, said, “The United States has given a response that will make a new round of talks inevitable.”

The parliamentarian said the US must show more seriousness and “act wisely” in the talks and urged Washington to “show it is determined to resolve differences.” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said on Wednesday that Iran had received, via EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, the US government’s response to its ideas about how to resolve outstanding issues in talks on reviving the 2015 nuclear deal. Iran, he said, was carefully reviewing and assessing the Americans’ response.

The nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1 countries (the US, UK, France, Russia, and China – the five permanent members of the UN Security Council – plus Germany), formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), was reached in July 2015. In that deal, the world powers agreed to lift sanctions on Iran and Iran accepted temporary limitations to its nuclear program. Former US President Donald Trump, citing Iranian violations, pulled the United States out of the JCPOA and reimposed sanctions on Iran, after which Tehran abrogated its own commitments, violating some of the deal’s most basic limitations. Talks on reviving the agreement began in April 2021 in Vienna following the election of Joe Biden to the US presidency but were suspended in March 2022 over political differences between Tehran and Washington. After a five-month hiatus, they started again, with Iran asserting that the achievement of a revived nuclear deal depended only on US “realism” and “flexibility.” On Aug. 8, the EU put forward a “final text” of the draft decision on reviving the 2015 nuclear deal.