MOSCOW, March 2. /TASS/. Iran, Russia and China have the political will to negotiate the ‘revival’ of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on Iran's nuclear deal, while the West lacks it, Russia's permanent envoy to international organizations in Vienna Mikhail Ulyanov told TASS in an interview.
"The only thing needed for the ‘revival’ of the [Iran] nuclear deal at this stage is for all participants in the Vienna talks to return to the Austrian capital and promptly bring the negotiating process to a successful conclusion. This is entirely possible, given the appropriate political will to do so. Iran, Russia, and China have it. However, the Western countires lack it," he said.
When commenting on Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian's words that his Iraqi counterpart Fuad Hussein had received assurances from representatives of the US administration that Washington was interested in settling the disagreements with Tehran, which prevented the revival of the nuclear deal, Ulyanov noted that Russia "has no reasons to doubt the words" of the Iranian top diplomat. "At the same time, we do not observe any readiness on the part of the United States and the European Troika (the UK, Germany, France) to resume the Vienna talks on the JCPOA," the Russian envoy added.
The JCPOA was signed with Tehran in 2015 by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany in order to address the crisis over Iran’s nuclear research. In 2018, the former president of the United States, Donald Trump, pulled out of this agreement. The current US leader, Joe Biden, has repeatedly signaled his willingness to bring Washington back into the nuclear deal.
Since April 2021, Russia, the UK, Germany, China, the US and France have been in talks with Iran in Vienna on breathing new life into the JCPOA. On November 10, 2022, the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, said that negotiations with Iranian representatives in the Austrian capital ended inconclusively.