Washington considers possible a quick agreement if Iran is “serious”
The United States reported on Thursday “substantial progress” during the negotiations in Vienna to save the Iranian nuclear agreement, judging a possible agreement “in the coming days” if Iran “shows seriousness”.
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AFP
“Substantial progress has been made over the past week,” but “there is no overall agreement until there is agreement on the smallest detail,” said a gatekeeper. word of American diplomacy questioned by AFP, without wanting to comment on the still problematic subjects. “If Iran is serious, we can and we must reach an agreement” in “the next few days”, he added.
Any delay “far beyond” this deadline “would seriously threaten the possibility of returning to the agreement”, warned the spokesman for American diplomacy.
The talks in Vienna aim to save the 2015 agreement which allowed the lifting of international economic sanctions once morest Iran in exchange for strict limits on its nuclear program supposed to prevent it from acquiring the atomic bomb. The United States left it in 2018 under President Donald Trump, who considered it insufficient, and reinstated its sanctions. In response, Tehran has largely freed itself from restrictions on its nuclear activities.
Today, many experts estimate that Iran is only a few weeks away from having enough fissile material to manufacture a nuclear weapon — even if it still takes several complex steps to get there. the bomb itself.
“Absurd”
On Thursday, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called “absurd” accusations that his country was preparing to produce an atomic bomb, reaffirming that the Iranian nuclear program was peaceful.
Current US President Joe Biden has said he is ready to return to the agreement, and therefore to lift part of the US sanctions once more, provided that the Islamic Republic resumes its commitments.
The Vienna negotiations aim to allow this mutual return in the text. They are taking place between signatories who are still members of the agreement (China, Russia, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Iran), with the indirect participation of the United States, which is not negotiating face-to-face with Tehran.
France had warned on Wednesday that Iran had only a few “days” left to rally to the agreement or trigger a “serious crisis” of proliferation.
“Closer than ever”
Iranian negotiator Ali Baghéri told him that the envoys were “closer than ever to an agreement”. “However, nothing is agreed until everything is agreed,” he nuanced, like the Americans. He had also called on the other parties to take “serious decisions”, Washington and Tehran regularly referring responsibility for each blockage.
Earlier, the Iranian authorities had recalled wanting the “guarantee” that the agreement would be well “implemented”, while the threat that an American political alternation hovers once more comes to call it into question.
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