EU's Proposal on Nuclear Deal Unacceptable Unless Iran's Demands Considered, Reports Say

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Iran is ready to consider Europe’s new proposal on the nuclear deal if its demands on sanctions and other issues are taken into account, the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported on Friday, citing an informed Iranian official.

According to the Iranian official familiar with the nuclear talks, the EU's proposal will be acceptable to Tehran if the bloc provides Iran with confidence in various issues, including political claims related to safeguards, sanctions and guarantees for the sustainability of the agreement.

Earlier in the day, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing a European diplomat, that the European Union had made a proposal, with significant concessions, to Iran on the revival of the nuclear deal.

On August 4, the negotiation process to restore the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran resumed in Vienna, where the heads of all delegations were supposed to arrive for a possible meeting of the JCPOA joint commission. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Monday that a new text of the JCPOA had been finalized and now the participants need to make political decisions to conclude the deal.

The United Kingdom, Russia, China, Germany, the United States, France, the European Union, and Iran signed the JCPOA in 2015, imposing restrictions on the advancement of the Iranian nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of US sanctions. In 2018, then-US President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from JCPOA and reimposed comprehensive sanctions, prompting Iranian authorities to respond by gradually abandoning their own commitments under the deal, specifically on nuclear research, centrifuges and the level of uranium enrichment.

Both countries expressed interest in resuming talks on the JCPOA after Joe Biden replaced Trump at the White House. In December 2021, JCPOA parties agreed on two drafts of the new deal, but no definitive agreement has been reached. Since then, the parties had several rounds of talks on the revival of the deal.