Following the three European nations’ warnings that failing to resume negotiations would result in Tehran receiving new international sanctions, Iran, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom will hold nuclear talks in Istanbul.
The E3 nations’ foreign ministers and the European Union’s foreign policy chief had their first phone call with Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Abbas Araghchi on Thursday following Israel and the United States’ earlier attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities a month ago.
The three European nations are the only remaining parties to a 2015 nuclear agreement that the US withdrew from in exchange for restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program, along with China and Russia, which had lifted sanctions on the Middle Eastern nation.
According to Esmaeil Baghaei, a spokesman for Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “the meeting will take place at the deputy foreign minister level.”
If Iran and the US have been holding nuclear talks before Israel launched a surprise attack, the E3 have declared they will impose UN sanctions on Tehran until the end of August.
Iran has accused the US of being a factor in the Israeli attack, which resulted in the deaths of top military figures, nuclear scientists, and hundreds of civilians. Additionally, the US attacked three significant Iranian nuclear sites, claiming they had “obliterated” them. On June 24, a ceasefire was declared in effect.
According to Araghchi, “If EU/E3 want to have a role, they should act responsibly and put the stale policies of threat and pressure, including the “snap-back,” for which they lack unquestionable moral and legal ground.
Tehran and Washington had five rounds of nuclear negotiations with Oman in the lead up to the Israel-Iran conflict, but they encountered significant obstacles, including uranium enrichment, which Western powers want to reduce to zero in order to reduce the risk of weaponization.
Tehran maintains that its nuclear program is merely intended for civilian purposes.
Middle Eastern evaluations
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian supreme leader Ali Larijani, the top adviser to Iran’s supreme leader on nuclear issues, had a surprise meeting at the Kremlin on Sunday.
According to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, Larijani “conveyed assessments of the Middle East’s growing nuclear threat” and “conducted surveys” of the unannounced meeting.
Putin went on to state Russia’s “well-known positions” regarding stabilizing the region’s climate and political solutions to the Iranian nuclear program.
Source: Aljazeera
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