MOSCOW, February 8. /TASS/. The situation around the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on the Iranian nuclear program in the context of the Vienna talks was the focus of a telephone conversation between Russian and Iranian Foreign Ministers, Sergey Lavrov and Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, the Russian foreign ministry said on Tuesday.
"The sides discussed the development of the situation around the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on the Iranian nuclear program in the context of the ongoing Vienna talks on the restoration of the initial nuclear deal. The minister spoke in favor of the soonest revival of the JCPOA in its original well-balanced format, which was approved by the United Nations Security Council," it said.
According to the ministry, the top diplomats also exchanged views on the results of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s recent visit to Russia and called for the further expansion of cooperation in all areas "on the basis of the leaders’ agreements."
"They also touched upon regional topics," the ministry added.
The conversation was initiated by the Iranian side.
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.