US: Indirect Talks with Iran to Resume in Vienna But Demand to Lift All Sanctions May Cause ‘Impasse’

WASHINGTON - The U.S. and Iran have agreed to a second round of indirect talks in Vienna next week to try to bring each other back into compliance with a 2015 nuclear deal, but Iran has insisted that all U.S. sanctions against it be lifted and the U.S. warned that such a demand may lead to an impasse.

A senior U.S. State Department official who spoke to reporters on Friday said the indirect talks would resume in the middle of next week in the Austrian capital. U.S. and Iranian diplomats concluded an initial round of meetings earlier in the day, with mediators from the European Union delivering messages between the two sides. The talks began Tuesday with Iran meeting Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia, the five other remaining signatories of the 2015 deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and those five world powers meeting separately with the U.S. delegation nearby. Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can download this video to view it offline. The JCPOA called for Iran to freeze nuclear activities that could be weaponized in return for sanctions relief from world powers. The U.S. withdrew in 2018 and began unilaterally ratcheting up sanctions on Iran under then-President Donald Trump, who criticized the deal negotiated by his predecessor as not doing enough to stop objectionable Iranian behavior. Iran retaliated a year later by exceeding the JCPOA’s nuclear activity limits. The U.S. official described this week’s talks as productive, businesslike and constructive. The official said, however, that EU mediators going back and forth between two hotels carrying messages between the U.S. and Iranian teams was cumbersome.