Iran-US nuclear talks to resume ‘soon’, say top Iran and EU diplomats

Iran will “soon” resume indirect talks with the United States to reach a new nuclear deal, Iran’s foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said on Saturday.

"We are prepared to resume talks in the coming days,” Amirabdollahian said on Saturday after a "long but positive meeting" with the EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrel. “What is important for Iran is to fully receive the economic benefits of the 2015 accord,” the minister added.

"We are expected to resume talks in the coming days and break the impasse,” Borrel meanwhile told reporters. “It has been three months and we need to accelerate the work.”

The European Union has been coordinating indirect talks between Iran and the US over the past year, but these have been stuck in an impasse for months.

The 2015 nuclear deal with Iran collapsed in 2018 when the United States, led by then-president Donald Trumped, unilaterally pulled out. The US’ reimposition of crippling sanctions prompted Iran to begin violating its core nuclear limits about a year later.

The current US administration, led by Joe Biden, showed willingness to revive the deal and entered indirect talks with Iran over the past year, raising hopes among European allies. In March, the EU invited foreign ministers representing the accord's parties to Vienna to finalise an agreement.

But Iran has accused the US in the past weeks of “stalling” negotiations as it refused to remove the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Tehran’s elite security force, from the US Foreign Terrorist Organization list.