[ad_1]
Issued on:
World powers and Iran will gather in Vienna on Monday to try to salvage their 2015 nuclear deal, but with Tehran sticking to its tough stance and Western powers increasingly frustrated, hopes of a breakthrough appear slim.
Diplomats say time is running low to resurrect the pact, which then-US President Donald Trump abandoned in 2018, angering Iran and dismaying the other powers involved – Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia.
Six rounds of indirect talks were held between April and June. The new round begins after a hiatus triggered by the election of a new Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi, a hardline cleric.
Tehran’s new negotiating team has set out demands that US and European diplomats consider unrealistic, Western diplomats say.
They include insisting that all US and European Union sanctions imposed since 2017, including those unrelated to Iran’s nuclear programme, be dropped.
‘As one diplomat said, “you can’t revive a dead corpse”‘
In parallel, Tehran’s conflicts with the UN atomic watchdog, which monitors the nuclear programme, have festered.
Iran has pressed ahead with its uranium enrichment programme and the IAEA says its inspectors have been treated roughly and refused access to reinstall monitoring cameras at a site it deems essential to reviving the deal.
“If Iran thinks it can use this time to build more leverage and then come back and say they want something better, it simply won’t work. We and our partners won’t go for it,” US envoy Robert Malley told BBC Sounds on Saturday.
He warned that Washington would…
[ad_2]
Source : france24
