“We are closer to a deal, but we are not still there.” That was Enrique Mora, the EU official who chairs the Vienna talks on Iran’s nuclear agreement, on June 21, 2021, one day after Ebrahim Raisi won Iran’s presidential election.
The diplomats had been at it since April. Talks reopened in Vienna that month with the original deal’s other signatories (the UK, France, Russia, China, Germany and the EU) shuttling between delegations, because Iran refused to sit down directly with Americans. Eric Brewer of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, writing for RUSI after the first round, said two working groups, one on sanctions and one on nuclear steps, formed almost immediately.
Where the sanctions fight sat
The mechanics were simple to state and hard to solve. Washington said it would lift “sanctions that are inconsistent with the JCPOA.” Tehran said “all sanctions imposed by the Trump administration” meant exactly that. The gap covered penalties placed on the Central Bank and the National Iranian Oil Company under other legal authorities. Iran called those a violation of the deal. The United States argued they might technically fit within it, though leaving them in place would deny Iran the benefits it expected.
Sequencing was the second snag. Iran wanted every sanction lifted first, then a period of verification, and only after that a rollback of its nuclear work. Brewer wrote that the U.S. would probably want Iran to restore IAEA camera access and the Additional Protocol before any reductions began. His read was that the nuclear questions looked easier than the sanctions ones.
A pause before the final round
By late June the tone had turned upbeat. Araghchi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, said before the sixth round started that “almost all the agreement documents are ready.” Mora said negotiators now had “more clarity on technical documents”, though he added that all of them remained “quite complex.” Russia’s Mikhail Ulyanov suggested a deal might arrive “maybe even by mid-July, unless something extraordinary and negative happens.”
Then the Joint Commission took a break so delegations could consult their governments before what officials called the final round. Britain, France and Germany issued a joint line: “The time for decision is fast approaching.” Outgoing Foreign Minister Javad Zarif told Al Jazeera that “the text is getting cleaner and cleaner.”
Raisi’s win clouded the picture, since he had opposed the agreement before. During the campaign, though, he said he backed it and would implement it effectively.
The Jerusalem Post reported in September 2021 that six rounds of indirect negotiations had been held without restoring compliance. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said then: “The Vienna talks will resume soon and over the next few weeks.”
Sources
- Salvaging the Iran Nuclear Deal: Round One in Vienna, and What Comes Next (RUSI, Eric Brewer)
- 'Clarity on technical issues' reported at Vienna talks following Iran elections (Doha News)
- Nuclear Talks Between Iran and World Powers to Resume Within a Few Weeks (Jerusalem Post)
