‘New chapter’ in revival of the Iran nuclear deal: President Hassan Rouhani

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — President Hassan Rouhani welcomed the indirect talks on Tuesday with the US in Vienna and said the full implementation of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Actions (JCPOA) is the way forward for all parties involved.

“In recent days we are witnessing a new chapter in the revival of the JCPOA,” President Rouhani said during a cabinet meeting on Wednesday morning. “Today we are hearing one united call and that is all the parties of this nuclear agreement have concluded that there is no better way than the JCPOA and there is no path except the full implementation of the JCPOA and this new success is for the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Iranian negotiators and their American counterparts, along with other signatories to the deal, gathered in Vienna on Tuesday to indirectly discuss how to revive the nuclear agreement, which former US President Donald Trump withdrew from in 2018. Two working groups are to meet again to hammer out differences.

“We do see this as a constructive and certainly welcome step. And in the end, we hope that we are able to leave Vienna, return to the United States – our negotiating team, I should say – with a better understanding of a roadmap for how we get to that end state: mutual compliance; Iranian compliance with the deal, and how the United States might also resume its compliance with the deal,” Ned Price, US State Department spokesperson, said in his daily briefing on Tuesday.

“Constructive Joint Commission meeting. There's unity and ambition for a joint diplomatic process with two expert groups on nuclear implementation and sanctions lifting. As Coordinator I will intensify separate contacts here in Vienna with all relevant parties, including US,” Enrique Mora, the Deputy Secretary General/Political Director of European External Action Service, said on Twitter.

Both Washington and Tehran have reneged on their commitments under the deal. Iran has scaled back on measures and installed new advanced centrifuges and increased the enrichment of uranium since mid-2018 when the Trump administration withdrew from the deal and placed Iran under its most rigid sanction regime.

The Iranian side led by the Supreme Leader Ali Khamanei has said that Iran would come back into full compliance after the US lifts sanctions that have crippled the Iranian economy.

US officials on the other hand argue that the US is worse off both on the nuclear front and on the regional issue where Iran has become “more aggressive.”

The two expert-level groups are to discuss ways of removing sanctions on Iran and how Tehran could come back into full compliance over the next days before a possible Friday meeting of the Joint Commission.

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