Negotiations on revival of Iran nuclear deal reach stalemate

European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has said the negotiations on the Iran nuclear deal to effect US re-entry and the return of Tehran to compliance have reached stalemate.

“I don’t expect any breakthrough in the next days,” he told Agence France Presse. “I don’t have anything more to propose,” he said.

He was hopeful of renewing the deal after he submitted his “final text” to Iran and the US in August, but their recent responses have been discouraging. Mr Borrell said the proposals were “converging” in summer but said their latest offerings “are not converging — they are diverging”.

He blamed Iran for submitting “unhelpful” proposals, and the political situation in the United States, where there is congressional bipartisan opposition to US re-entry to the deal and an inauspicious environment ahead of November’s legislative elections.

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An unnamed European diplomat told Politico the stalemate could last until after the elections.

In 2018, former US president Donald Trump abandoned the deal, which limits Iran’s nuclear programme in exchange for the lifting of sanctions. President Joe Biden promised to return to the deal, but each side’s demands have stalled any agreement.

Mr Borrell’s comments came during the meeting of the board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which ends on Friday.

On Monday, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said Tehran is “ready to co-operate with the agency to clear up the false and unrealistic perceptions regarding its peaceful nuclear activities”.

Mr Kanani was responding to last week’s declaration the IAEA was “not in a position to provide assurance that Iran’s nuclear programme is exclusively peaceful”.

The IAEA monitoring of Iran’s nuclear facilities was reduced after the US withdrew from the deal. The agency’s surveillance cameras were turned off in June after the board censured Iran for failing to provide a credible explanation for uranium traces found in 2019 at three sites not declared to the IAEA.

Iran says it would return to compliance if the IAEA drops this inquiry, but agency director Rafael Grossi has rejected this demand. The US says this issue is not connected with the nuclear deal and should not impede the acceptance of M Borrell’s text.

According to Reuters, Tehran has rejected an IAEA statement prepared by western powers calling on “Iran to act immediately to fulfil its legal obligations and, without delay, take the IAEA director general’s offer of further engagement to clarify and resolve all outstanding safeguards issues.”

A year after the US left the agreement, Iran began to enrich uranium to a higher purity with more advanced centrifuges than stipulated in the deal. Iran also amassed a stockpile 18 times larger than allowed, improved it facilities and advanced its research.

Experts argue Iran can enrich uranium to 90 per cent purity needed for bombs but does not have the knowledge to build a bomb. It could take a year or two to acquire this expertise if Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei lifts his ban on weapons of mass destruction, which he ruled violate Islamic law.