Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif is in Vienna for talks with EU and US officials on the implementation of a nuclear agreement to put decades of confrontation behind.
The minister is accompanied by head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Ali Akbar Salehi and AEOI spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is expected to announce that Iran has honored its commitments under the agreement, called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
Zarif will meet US Secretary of State John Kerry and EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini. The IAEA report will allow them to announce that the JCPOA can go into force.
Zarif and Mogherini are expected to issue a joint statement on the “Implementation Day", marking the lifting of sanctions on the Islamic Republic.
Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council – Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States – plus Germany finalized the JCPOA in the Vienna, on July 14.
Under the JCPOA, limits are put on Iran’s nuclear activities in exchange for the removal of sanctions against the Islamic Republic.
Iran took the final step in the implementation of the accord on Thursday when it removed the core of the Arak heavy water reactor and filled it with cement.
“We carried out the last stage of the removal of the Arak reactor’s heart and today our job was completely done,” Kamalvandi said.
The EU had already expressed preparedness to lift its economic sanctions against Iran as soon as the UN nuclear agency verifies Tehran’s compliance.
Diplomatic sources said on Friday that the 28-member bloc alongside the US and UN can end their sanctions against Tehran on the “Implementation Day."
On Friday, US President Barack Obama lifted a decades-old ban on the export of civilian passenger aircraft to Iran, officials said in Washington.