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Talks on restoration of Iran nuclear deal moving ahead — Russian diplomat

Earlier, Mikhail Ulyanov said that the talks have entered the final stretch

VIENNA, February 11. /TASS/. The Vienna talks on the restoration of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on the Iranian nuclear program are moving ahead, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the Vienna-based international organizations and the head of the Russian delegation Mikhail Ulyanov said on Friday.

"Yet another very useful meeting with the US Special Envoy for Iran Mr. Robert Malley. We are definitely moving ahead at the ViennaTalks on JCPOA," he wrote on his Twitter account.

Earlier, the Russian diplomat said that the talks have entered the final stretch.

The eighth round of talks kicked off on December 27, 2021. It is expected to be the last one as the negotiators are set to finish the work by early February.

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), also known as the Iran nuclear deal, was signed between Iran, the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (Russia, the United Kingdom, China, the United States and France) and Germany in 2015. Under the deal, Iran undertook to curb its nuclear activities and place them under the total control of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in exchange for the abandonment of the sanctions imposed previously by the United Nations Security Council, the European Union and the United States over its nuclear program.

The future of the deal was called into question after the United States’ unilateral withdrawal in May 2018 and Washington’s unilateral oil export sanctions against Teheran. Iran argued that all the 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.

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