Iran says nuclear talks cannot remain open, may set a deadline

New Delhi- In a sign of frustration over unending talks aimed at restoring the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, Iran has said the country may set a deadline as the window of negotiations cannot remain open “for over.”

The move to set the deadline could happen through parliament as some politicians are getting increasingly impatient with the unending talks, Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said in an interview to Al Jazeera Wednesday night.

“In the parliament, there is this idea that the government should not perennially be in a path of negotiations to bring all parties back to the JCPO,” he said referring to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the accord from which the US unilaterally abandoned in 2018.

He said some factions of Iran’s parliament are pushing for proposals and legislation that could make the government’s work “more difficult” in continuing with the negotiations.

“The window of the talks to return to the JCPO won’t remain open forever,” Amir-Abdollahian said.

The last time Iran’s conservative parliament passed legislation concerning the nuclear deal was in late 2020 when it set a deadline for the US sanction to be removed. When that did not happen, the government of centrist former president Hassan Rouhani ramped up uranium enrichment and limit nuclear inspections.

The JCPO was signed between Iran, China, Russia, the United States, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the European Union in 2015. It put strict curbs on Iran’s nuclear programme in exchange for lifting sanctions.

While unilaterally withdrawing from the deal in 2018, the then US president Donald Trump had said it not doing enough and imposed harshest sanctions on Iran which are still continuing.

With President Joe Biden in in office, indirect talks with Iran, mediated by the European Union and attended by signatories, began in Vienna almost two years ago but so far not much headway has been made.

Last September, a final text was hammered out based on a European offer, but it fell through with Iran and the West accusing each other of not being serious enough to cross the finish line.

The US and the EU have since imposed many rounds of additional sanctions on Iran for its harsh response to the nationwide protests following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody, and also for Tehran allegedly supplying Russia with armed drones for the war in Ukraine.

Iran has maintained that it opposes the war and had sold drones to Moscow months before the Ukraine war.

The foreign minister reiterated Iran’s position that Western allies have been behind the “riots” in the country in the past few months. This, he said also hindered the talks.

He said, “we are now at a point where achieving an agreement (on the nuclear issue) can be within reach, on the condition that the American side acts realistically.”

Bloomberg report last month that the international nuclear watchdog IAEA inspectors have found uranium enriched to 84 percent, the highest levels ever seen in Iran and close to the 90 percent required for a bomb. Iran maintains that it does not want bomb. – INDIA NEWS STREAM