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US and Iran remain at loggerheads over key details of an emerging deal to revive a landmark nuclear agreement and may need several weeks to resolve their differences, US media said quoting officials familiar with the talks.
Expectations of an imminent breakthrough grew as Washington and Tehran responded to a “final” European Union proposal that would ease sanctions on Iran’s economy, including oil exports, in return for scaling back its advancing atomic program, Bloomberg wrote in a report published on August 27.
According to Bloomberg, one senior European official said the sides have never been closer to rebooting their 2015 accord, echoing comments by a top Biden administration adviser. Yet two other officials with knowledge of the negotiations said clashes continue over international monitors’ investigation into the Islamic Republic’s past nuclear work, and economic indemnities demanded by Tehran if a future US government exits the agreement, as then-President Donald Trump did four years ago.
“The talks are being closely watched by oil and gas traders — and politicians facing a public backlash as high energy prices send inflation spiraling around the world. A deal could release millions of barrels of oil and refined products that Iran has stored since the Trump administration re-imposed US sanctions in 2018,” Bloomberg continued.
A White House National Security Council spokesperson acknowledged that gaps remain in the talks and said the US is continuing to negotiate.
Iran said Wednesday it was reviewing the US response to the EU plan and would comment once the assessment is complete.
Iran and the remaining parties to the JCPOA — Russia, China, France, Britain, and Germany — had held several rounds of negotiations in the Austrian capital of Vienna since April last year to restore the agreement, which was abandoned by the former US President Donald Trump in May 2018.
In quitting the agreement, Trump restored sanctions on Iran as part of what he called the “maximum pressure” campaign against the country. Those sanctions are being enforced to this day by the Joe Biden administration, even though it has repeatedly acknowledged that the policy has been a mistake and a failure.
Numerous rounds of indirect negotiations in Vienna and Doha between Tehran and Washington over the past 16 months have failed to secure a path back to the deal.
But earlier this month, the European Union presented what it has described as a “final text” to a renewed deal. Iran submitted a response to the draft last week, which EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has described as “reasonable“.
Elsewhere in its report, Bloomberg pointed to the claims of the International Atomic Energy Agency on Iran’s nuclear program.
“The International Atomic Energy Agency, whose inspectors have been probing uranium traces detected at several undeclared sites for more than three years, holds two key meetings in September that will be attended by senior officials from all the parties to the original 2015 agreement: China, France, Germany, Iran, Russia, the UK and US… The IAEA investigation has emerged as a major point of contention and obstacle to progress in recent weeks. But the agency’s director general, Rafael Mariano Grossi, suggested this week during an interview on PBS that a resolution to the investigation is possible.”
