EU foreign policy chief to visit Tehran to revive JCPOA
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The Iranian Foreign Ministry announces that EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell heads to Tehran to discuss the JCPOA impasse.
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EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell attends a news conference with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Brussels, Belgium, February 27, 2022 (Reuters)
High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell will land in Tehran on Friday to discuss the efforts aimed at reviving the 2015 nuclear deal, also known as the JCPOA, the Iranian foreign ministry said Friday.
Borrell "will visit Tehran tonight to meet with Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and other Foreign Ministry officials," spokesperson Saeed Khatibzadeh said.
Amir-Abdollahian had said Thursday that had the US dealt "realistically" during the last round of talks in Vienna, the member states would have been closer than ever to signing an accord.
"The Americans have put new issues on the table of negotiations, in addition to the possibility of imposing sanctions unrelated to nuclear activity," Iran's top diplomat told the Croatian Večernji list newspaper.
After eight rounds of negotiations to return the JCPOA to its original form and bring the US back into the accord owing to external considerations, a pause was taken in Vienna on March 11, 2022. The Vienna negotiations had already neared their conclusion and were anticipated to be finished by the end of February prior to that.
This comes after the IAEA's Board of Governors adopted on June 8 a draft resolution submitted by the US and the E3, criticizing Iran for what they claim were incomplete answers given to the IAEA on uranium traces at "undeclared sites". These claims were quickly refuted by the Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), Mohammad Eslami, who said that Iran has neither secret nor unwritten nuclear activities nor unreported nuclear sites.
Iran had abandoned all commitments beyond the Safeguards Agreement in response to the International Atomic Energy Agency's Board of Governors' adoption of an anti-Iran resolution, an Iranian lawmaker revealed on Saturday, condemning the resolution passed by the agency.
