US sounds caution against optimism by Iran, Russia over nuclear talks

GBNEWS24DESK//

The United States on Tuesday expressed caution over upbeat comments by Iran and Russia about talks in Vienna to salvage the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, saying it was still too soon to say if Tehran had returned to the negotiations with a constructive approach.

Iran and Russia both gave upbeat views on Tuesday about talks that kicked off this week to salvage Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with global powers, although Western nations have said the negotiations are going too slowly, reports Reuters.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said a deal was possible in the near future if other parties showed “good faith” while Russian envoy Mikhail Ulyanov said a working group was making “indisputable progress” in the eighth round of talks.

Speaking at a telephonic press briefing, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said there was some progress in the last round of talks but it was too soon to tell whether Tehran, in the current round, returned to the table to build on those gains.

“It’s really too soon to tell whether Iran has returned with a more constructive approach to this round,” Price said. “We are now assessing, in the course of these talks, whether the Iranians came back with an agenda of new issues or preliminary solutions to the ones already presented,” Price said.

The original agreement lifted sanctions against Tehran in exchange for restrictions on its atomic activities but Donald Trump pulled Washington out of the deal in 2018, a year after he became U.S president. Iran later breached many of the deal’s nuclear restrictions and kept pushing well beyond them.

The latest round of indirect talks between Iran and the United States resumed on Monday in Vienna, with Tehran focused on getting US sanctions lifted again, as they were under the original bargain, despite scant progress on reining in its atomic activities.

Iran refuses to meet US officials directly, meaning other parties to the deal besides the United States and Iran — Russia, China, France, Britain, Germany and the European Union — must shuttle between the two sides.

The seventh round of talks, the first under Iran’s new hardline President Ebrahim Raisi, ended 11 days ago after some new Iranian demands were added to a working text.