EU envoy in Tehran amid hopes to restore nuclear agreement

Tehran, March 27

A leading European Union diplomat held talks in Tehran on Sunday, Iran’s state-run media reported, amid hopes that an agreement to restore Iran’s tattered nuclear deal with world powers could be completed.

The meetings between the EU’s envoy, Enrique Mora, and Iran’s top nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani come at a time as the glimmers of a resolution to some of the thorniest issues in the negotiations have emerged.

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The report on the talks in Tehran gave scant detail, saying only that the diplomats discussed the latest on the nuclear agreement, with Kani repeating that Iran believed a deal was within reach if US was “realistic” in its demands.

Former President Donald Trump abandoned the nuclear deal in 2018 and re-imposed crushing sanctions.

Iran gradually breached the agreement with a massive expansion of its nuclear work. Nuclear talks broke off earlier this month as last-minute wrangles in Vienna coincided with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and financial sanctions imposed by the West on Moscow.

But officials have since made encouraging noises. Russia appeared to back down from its earlier demand that its trade with Iran be exempted from Western sanctions.

And for the first time, Iran’s top diplomat on Saturday publicly signalled flexibility over Tehran’s demand that Washington stop designating the country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard as a foreign terrorist organisation. — AP