MOSCOW, April 17. /TASS/. The participants in a meeting of the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) Joint Commission expressed their resolve after their Saturday discussions to continue the talks on the Iran nuclear deal as soon as possible, Russia’s Permanent Representative at International Organizations in Vienna Mikhail Ulyanov said.
"The meeting of the JCPOA Joint Commission is over. Its participants with satisfaction took note of the progress achieved and expressed their resolve to continue the talks to complete the process [of discussions] successfully as soon as possible," the Russian envoy wrote on his Twitter.
"The Joint Commission instructed expert-level working groups on US sanctions lifting and nuclear issues to continue their activities on Saturday afternoon, Sunday and next week in order not to waste time and to make further progress in the negotiations on JCPOA restoration," the Russia’s Permanent Representative at International Organizations in Vienna added.
On Thursday, the JCPOA Joint Commission discussed prospects for the United States’ possible return to the deal and ways of ensuring full and efficient implementation of the Iran nuclear deal by the all the parties to it. Informal discussions were continued on Friday in various formats, including at an expert level.
The 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 total control of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in exchange of 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 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.