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It’s in Tehran, Iran. Political delegations from Iran and the world powers that signed on to its 2015 nuclear deal are set to return to Vienna for what could be the last stretch of hard work to get the deal back on track.
Several sides say that the eighth round of talks, which had been put on hold for more than a week so that delegations could go back to their home cities for political talks, will start again on Tuesday in Vienna.
Since late November, when the talks started again after a long break, different sides have said that real progress has been made. However, it is clear that there are still a lot of problems to be solved before a deal can be reached to restart the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
The agenda for the Iranian negotiators to continue the eighth round of #ViennaTalks has been carefully defined. An agreement in which the sanctions that form the maximum pressure are not lifted will condition the country's economy and cannot be the basis of a #GoodDeal.
— علی شمخانی (@alishamkhani_ir) February 7, 2022
Iran still doesn’t want to talk to the United States directly, even though the United States broke the deal and imposed harsh sanctions on Iran in 2018. This means that European diplomats will have to keep going back and forth between the two countries.
Monday was a busy day for Iranian officials. They said that the West has to meet Iran’s expectations of sanctions relief.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said that if the US and the so-called “E3” – France, Germany, and the United Kingdom – act and act politically, a deal in Vienna could be reached quickly.
In the texts that have been agreed to in Vienna, some of our demands for lifting sanctions haven’t been taken into account, he said. Still, he said he hoped that “in this round, we will come to a deal.”
Iran’s security chief Ali Shamkhani said in a tweet that the Iranian team would go to Vienna with a clear goal of getting sanctions off of the country.
It won’t be possible to make a good deal if the sanctions that make the most pressure aren’t lifted, he said, referring to a policy that was in place when Donald Trump was president and is still in place now that Joe Biden is in charge.