Berlin: Iran has confirmed new interviews with European powers to be held on Friday in Istanbul, the country’s state media reported, the first since the United States attacked Iranian nuclear installations a month ago.
Iranian diplomats will meet counterparts from Great Britain, France and Germany, known as E3, after the trio warned that the sanctions could be reposed in Tehran if it does not return to the negotiation table on its nuclear program.
Western nations and Israel have long accused Iran of seeking to develop nuclear weapons, a charge of Tehran has always denied.
“In response to the request of European countries, Iran agreed to hold a new series of talks,” the spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Monday, quoted by State TV on Monday.
The subject of talks will be Iran’s nuclear program, he added.
A German diplomatic source told AFP on Sunday that E3 was in contact with Tehran and said: “Iran should never be authorized to acquire a nuclear weapon”.
“This is why Germany, France and the United Kingdom continue to work intensively in the E3 format to find a lasting and verifiable diplomatic solution on the Iranian nuclear program,” said the source.
Israel launched a wave of surprise strikes on its regional enemy on June 13, targeting the main military and nuclear installations.
The United States has launched its own set of strikes against the Iranian nuclear program on June 22, reaching the Uranium enrichment center in Fordo, in the province of Qom south of Tehran, as well as nuclear sites in Isfahan and Natanz.
Kremlin meeting
Iran and the United States had organized several series of nuclear negotiations through Omani mediators before Israel launched its 12-day war against Iran.
However, the decision of American president Donald Trump to join Israel in the strike of Iranian nuclear installations indeed ended the talks.
The countries of the E3 have met Iranian representatives in Geneva for the last time on June 21 – just a day before the United States hit.
Also Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin held a surprise meeting at the Kremlin with Ali Larijani, the best adviser to Iran’s supreme chief on nuclear issues.
Larijani “has transmitted evaluations of the growing situation in the Middle East and around the Iranian nuclear program,” said Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, about the unexpected meeting.
Putin had expressed the “well-known positions of Russia on how to stabilize the situation in the region and on the political regulations of the Iranian nuclear program,” he added.
Moscow has a cordial relationship with Iran’s office leadership and provides crucial support to Tehran, but did not oscillate behind its partner even after the United States joined the Israeli bombing campaign.
Snapback mechanism
Iran and the global powers concluded an agreement in 2015 called the Complete Complete Action Plan (JCPOA), which imposed significant restrictions on the Tehran nuclear program in exchange for the relief of the sanctions.
But the hard-won agreement began to crash in 2018, during the first presidency of Trump, when the United States moved away from it and reprinted sanctions against Iran.
In recent days, European countries have threatened to trigger the “snapback” mechanism of the agreement, which makes it possible to reimpose sanctions in the event of non-compliance by Iran.
After an appeal with his European counterparts on Friday, the Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Abbas Araghchi, said that Western allies had “absolutely no moral legal reason” to reactivate the Snapback sanctions.
He developed in an article on social networks on Sunday.
“Through their actions and their declarations, in particular by providing political and material support to the recent unlike and illegal military assault by the Israeli regime and the United States … E3 has given up their role as” participants “in the JCPOA,” said Araghchi.
This tried to restore the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council dismissed “null and not avenue,” he added.
“Iran has shown that he is able to defeat all of a dirty work ” delusional, but has always been ready to make significant diplomacy in good faith,” wrote Araghchi.
Ali Velayati, adviser to the supreme chief of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said last week that there would be no new nuclear talks with the United States if they were conditioned in Tehran abandoning his uranium enrichment activities.
