MOSCOW, July 1. /TASS/. Russia expects that the talks on the return of the US to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) will be successfully completed by the sixth anniversary of the Iran nuclear deal - July 14, Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told a briefing on Thursday.
According to her, sizable progress has been seen at the talks on the Iran nuclear deal in Vienna. "Over these three months, the delegations have managed to achieve substantial progress in coordinating the parameters and modalities of the process to restore the JCPOA. They also managed to determine the response and the sequence of the moves that the US and Iran are to make, as well as to analyze how the corresponding commitments will be formalized and their checks ensured," she added.
Along with the revision of restrictions against Iran imposed by the US, it is a priority to "restore as soon as possible the verifying activity of the IAEA in Iran to the degree envisaged by the Joint Plan of Action," she said. These agreements have no sensible alternative, "and without them security measures are getting more vulnerable," the diplomat stressed.
Meanwhile, no practical moves are seen from the US for now of abandoning its policy of pressuring Iran, Zakharova added.
The future of the Iran nuclear deal was called in question after the United States’ unilateral pullout in May 2018 and Washington’s unilateral oil export sanctions against Teheran. Iran argued that all other participants, Europeans in the first place, were ignoring some of their own obligations in the economic sphere, thus making the deal in its current shape senseless. This said, it began to gradually scale down its commitments under the deal.
Iran and the international quintet have been holding face-to-face talks in Vienna since April on restoring the Iranian nuclear agreement to its original shape: the lifting of US sanctions from Iran and Washington's return to the deal. Also, participants in the JCPOA have been holding separate consultations with the US delegation without Iran taking part.