MOSCOW, April 20. /TASS/. The Joint Commission of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) will meet again early next week to continue efforts towards full restoration of the Iran nuclear deal, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the Vienna-based international organizations Mikhai, Ulyanov said on Tuesday.
"Today the Joint Commission of JCPOA took note with satisfaction of the progress made in negotiations to restore the nuclear deal. It was decided to take a break to allow the delegations to do homework and consult with the capitals. The Commission will meet again early next week," he wrote on his Twitter account.
He said earlier that on Tuesday the Joint Commission had planned to sum up the results of the work of its two working groups (on sanctions lifting and nuclear issues) and outline further plans. He also noted earlier that the talks had entered a "drafting stage," with the parties having "moved from general words to agreeing on specific steps towards the goal."
The Joint Commission had two offline meetings last week to discuss prospects for the United States’ possible return to the deal and steps needed to ensure full and efficient compliance with the deal’s terms by all its signatories. The commission members continues to discuss ways of restoring the nuclear deal at informal meetings 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.