MOSCOW, March 29. /TASS/. Russia is closely following Iran’s dealings with the EU and US concerning the renewal of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, known as the Iran nuclear deal) and is hopeful that they will help agreements to be reached, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at a press conference on Wednesday after his talks with Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir-Abdollahian.

"We are monitoring the contact between our Iranian colleagues and the Europeans, as well as between our Iranian colleagues and the Americans. We proceed from the fact that this contact will bring about the result that everybody is talking about, which is the resumption of full-fledged implementation of the agreements on Iran’s nuclear program," Lavrov said.

In the Russian foreign minister’s view, the final decision on the renewal of the nuclear deal should be made by all the parties to the JCPOA, including Russia and China.

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 the agreement. The current US leader, Joe Biden, has repeatedly signaled his willingness to bring Washington back into the nuclear deal. However, in the spring of 2022 the negotiations to breathe new life into the JCPOA came to a grinding halt in the wake of US-Iran relations deteriorating.