Iran Is Optimistic Regarding Nuclear Deal With The US, Russia Says Still Not Finished

Iran's nuclear facility at Natanz. (Wikimedia Commons/Hamed Saber)

JAKARTA - Indirect negotiations between Iran and the United States (US) have come to conclusion, regarding the opportunity to return to the abandoned 2015 Nuclear Agreement.

Iran and six world powers have been conferring in Vienna since April to find out what steps both sides should take. The United States withdrew in 2018 from the pact, under which Iran accepted curbs on its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of many foreign sanctions against it.

"We are making good and tangible progress on various issues. We are closer than ever to reaching an agreement but there are still important issues in the negotiations", Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said, quoted by Reuters from Al Jazeera television, Friday 18 June.

Araqchi said Iran's presidential election on Friday will have no effect on negotiations, Iran's negotiating team will continue talks regardless of domestic policy.

Next, the sixth round of talks resumes on Saturday with the remaining parties to the deal, Iran, Russia, China, France, Britain, Germany, and the European Union.

Meanwhile, the US delegation for the talks is based at a hotel across the street, as Iran refuses to meet face-to-face.

Since former US President Donald Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal and reimposed sanctions on Iran, Tehran has embarked on countermeasures, including rebuilding its stockpile of enriched uranium, a potential pathway to a nuclear bomb.

"We want to make sure that what happened when Trump pulled out of the deal will not be repeated by any other American president in the future", Araqchi told a pan-Arab satellite TV network.

Rusia's envoy for the talks, Mikhail Ulyanov, gave a cautionary note, citing progress in the talks made in recent days, but the process was not easy.

"Some difficult and time-consuming topics are still unresolved", he said. That's in line with the statement by the French Foreign Ministry on Wednesday this week, regarding there are still significant differences of opinion.

Separately, State Department spokesman Ned Price reiterated the U.S. view that the Vienna talks have made progress since they began, but challenges remain, underscoring that there is no guarantee of an end to the talks. He declined to say whether Araqchi or Ulyanov's assessment was more accurate.

"We have made progress between rounds one through six but, I don't want to be definitive in embracing one assessment over the other".

In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said President Joe Biden and President Vladimir Putin discussed the issue of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on the nuclear program at a meeting in Geneva, Switzerland.

"There are certain ideas there. The most important thing is that everything can come back together to a comprehensive plan", he told radio station Ekho Moskvy, citing TASS.