US has to make decision on reviving N-deal: Iran

(Representative photo) Flag of Iran and the United States of America.

The US needs to make a decision to wrap up a deal to salvage Iran’s 2015 nuclear accord with world powers, the Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson said yesterday amid fears that talks in Vienna might collapse. Efforts to clinch a new deal were left in limbo after a last-minute demand by Russia — now at odds with the West over its invasion of Ukraine — forced the powers to pause talks for an undetermined time despite having a largely completed text. Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian will visit Russia today, ministry spokesperson Saeed Khatibzadeh told a weekly news conference, without elaborating. Iran’s Nour News, affiliated with a top security body, described the foreign minister’s visit to Moscow as “a platform for serious, frank and forward-looking talks” between two countries which have demonstrated that “they can work very closely, decisively and successfully on complex issues”. “We are currently having a breather from the nuclear talks,” said Khatibzadeh.”We are not at a point of announcing an agreement now since there are some important open issues that need to be decided upon by Washington.” The US State Department said on Friday Washington continued to believe a potential deal to return to the 2015 agreement was close, but said decisions needed to be made in places such as Tehran and Moscow. On March 5, Russia’s foreign minister unexpectedly demanded sweeping guarantees that Russian trade with Iran would not be affected by sanctions imposed on Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine — a demand Western powers said was unacceptable and Washington insisted it would not agree to. A collapse of the talks to restore constraints on its uranium enrichment programme could result in Tehran getting within sprinting distance of developing nuclear weapons. Tehran denies it has ever sought atomic bombs. Still, Tehran seemed cautiously optimistic yesterday in assessing the future of the now 11-month-old negotiations. “We will remain in the Vienna talks until our legal and logical demands are met and a strong agreement is reached,” Ali Shamkhani, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, which makes the decisions in the Vienna talks, said in a tweet. In Washington, 49 of the 50 Republican US senators said they would not support a nuclear accord with Iran, underscoring their party’s opposition to attempts to revive the 2015 deal. Tensions have also risen since Iran fired a dozen missiles on Sunday at Erbil, capital of the autonomous Iraqi Kurdish region, in an assault that appeared to target the US and its allies.