Iran’s top negotiator holds ‘frank’ talks with EU’s Mora

Iran’s chief negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani has said that he held “frank” talks with European Union’s coordinator Enrique Mora, amid efforts to revive the 2015 Iran deal that the US abandoned five years ago.

Bagheri Kani, who is also deputy foreign minister for political affairs, said the talks took place on the sidelines of the 78th session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in New York on Thursday.

During the meeting, Bagheri Kani and Mora, the EU’s deputy foreign policy chief, discussed relations between Tehran and the bloc as well as the latest developments concerning talks aimed at removing anti-Iran sanctions and reviving the 2015 nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

“We had frank discussions on many areas of Iran-EU relationship, including developments on sanctions lifting negotiations. Consultations will be continued in future,” Bagheri Kani said in a post on social media platform X, formerly Twitter.

Bagheri Kani has already held talks with political representatives of the three European parties to a 2015 nuclear agreement, namely Germany, France, and the United Kingdom on the sidelines of the 78th UNGA. 

Bagheri Kani’s meeting with Mora came a day after Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and the EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, discussed ways to continue the JCPOA revival talks.

In a meeting in New York on Wednesday, Amir-Abdollahian and Borrell “stressed the importance of continuation of dialogue and full implementation of commitments by all parties to JCPOA”, Iran’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

"The parties showed interest in taking concrete actions based on an agreed framework and to establish as much mutual understanding as possible," the statement added.

JCPOA talks have been on pause since August last year, with Iran blaming a lack of political will on the part of US President Joe Biden’s administration to undo the damage caused to the multilateral nuclear deal by the previous US administration.

Donald Trump pulled Washington out of the UNSC-endorsed agreement in May 2018, imposing severe economic sanctions against Tehran while Iran was adhering to its commitments under the deal and even continued to do so for a year after the US withdrawal.

Tehran scaled back its commitments to the JCPOA in a series of pre-announced and clear steps after witnessing the other parties' failure to secure its interest under the agreement.

Some observers see the exchange of five prisoners between Iran and the US on Monday as a possible gate to a broader agreement between the two countries. The Iranian Foreign Ministry said that Borrell expressed his satisfaction with the prisoner swap in the meeting.

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