Iran demands US make first goodwill move amid push for nuclear talks

The status of talks to renew the 2015 Iran nuclear deal hung in the air on Friday, with a US offer to come back to the table met by Iranian demands that US sanctions have to be lifted before that can happen.

“There can be no nuclear meeting together with the US because the US has pulled out of the Vienna nuclear agreement,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Saeed Khatibzadeh wrote on Twitter.

Iran wouldn’t react on what was “yesterday” but on concrete actions, Khatibzadeh said.

Nevertheless, the offer to accept a European Union invitation for a return to talks from the administration of US President Joe Biden is a significant step, after four years during which the Trump administration pulled out of the deal and piled sanctions on Iran.

The deal was reached between the two countries – along with Britain, China, France, Russia and the EU – in 2015 in an effort to convince Iran to give up its nuclear weapons ambitions. The deal lifted sanctions in exchange for Iran limiting itself to civilian nuclear applications.

But Trump said the deal still left Iran with a pathway to weapons eventually and didn’t do enough to keep it from interfering in the region. The tough approach was applauded by Middle Eastern countries like Israel and Saudi Arabia, which see Iran as a regional rival.

Since then, Iran has slowly backed out of the deal itself, and this week said it would limit cooperation with international nuclear inspectors.

But it has left a door open to talks. On Friday, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted the hashtag #CommitActMeet, which the Foreign Ministry explained on its Farsi Instagram page: If the US committed to its obligations and lifted sanctions, Iran would be ready for a meeting with the US and five other countries who brokered the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.

Biden’s administration previously called for diplomacy with Iran, but insisted that Tehran must first return to full compliance with the nuclear deal.

However, on Thursday, the US rescinded a Trump administration attempt to initiate snapback sanctions on Tehran through the United Nations Security Council.

Russia on Friday welcomed the move.

The pressure of sanctions had clearly not contributed to the implementation of the Vienna nuclear agreement with Iran and had also led to a dead end, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov was quoted as saying by news agency Interfax.

“In this sense, this is something positive,” he said, adding that rejecting punitive measures was “in itself a good thing.”

Peskov said Russia had regretted the US withdrawal from the 2015 Vienna nuclear agreement under Trump in 2018.

“We remain supporters of this document and call on everyone to do everything for its effective implementation,” he said.

But Israel said it remains firmly committed to preventing Iran from building nuclear weapons, the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday.

Israel’s “position on the [Vienna] nuclear agreement has not changed,” it said in a statement.

“Israel believes that going back to the old agreement will pave Iran’s path to a nuclear arsenal,” according to the prime minister’s office.

Israel was in close contact with the US on this issue, it said in the statement.

The US also lifted a Trump administration policy that placed extreme travel restrictions on Iran’s UN diplomats living in New York.

“Until we sit down and talk, nothing’s going to happen,” a senior State Department official said in a call with reporters on Thursday.

“It doesn’t mean that when we sit down and talk we’re going to succeed, but we do know that if we don’t take that step, the situation’s just going to go from bad to worse,” the official added.

On Thursday, Britain, France, Germany and the United States urged Tehran to not take any “dangerous” steps that would kill the embattled agreement.