The meeting at the Grand Hotel lasts just under two hours. The Europeans commute to the nearby hotel where the Americans are staying, deliver messages to both sides, negotiate. At the end of the day, the weather in Vienna is one of moderate optimism. For the first time since Joe Biden took office in the White House, on Tuesday in the Austrian capital, Americans and Iranians returned to talk to try to save the Iran nuclear deal signed in 2015 and abandoned by Trump in 2018. by the other signatories of the agreement – the so-called P5 + 1 group, the five members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany – but to which the Americans arrived with an opening that was welcomed in Tehran. It was Robert Malley, the US special envoy for Iran, who took the first step a few days ago: America is willing to remove some sanctions that have to do with nuclear power if Tehran resumes respecting its commitments with the 2015 agreement.
The road to negotiation is uphill. The confidence of the post-Obama era has faded. The maximum pressure exerted by the Trump administration has widened the spectrum of sanctions, and a removal en masse as the Iranians would like is unthinkable, both technically and politically. The electoral campaign is also approaching in Tehran, in June the Iranians vote for the presidency and the Iranian leadership supported by the conservatives is not willing to give the Americans a side. Biden has to deal with the internal opposition of the Republicans and a part of the Democrats to the agreement.
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The objective of the Vienna negotiators is therefore to arrive at a road map that allows both parties to gradually return to compliance with the agreement without giving the impression of political failure. The first round of talks in Austria ended positively, even if an agreement remains distant: “A constructive meeting, there is unity and ambition for a joint diplomatic process with two expert groups on nuclear implementation and the lifting of sanctions “commented Enrique Mora, Deputy Secretary General of the European External Action Service (Seae) and negotiation coordinator. Abbas Araghchi, the influential Iranian deputy foreign minister who leads the delegation in Vienna and who played an important role in the negotiations that led to the agreement in 2015, also spoke of a “constructive meeting”.
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Two expert groups, one on lifting sanctions and the other on nuclear issues, will now work on concrete steps Washington and Tehran should take to return to full implementation of the JCPO. The joint commission will meet again on Friday, a sign of the desire not to waste the window of time before the Iranian elections in June and above all before the temporary agreement that Iran has closed with the IAEA expires at the end of May. In addition to bringing uranium enrichment to 20% – the threshold established by the JCPOa is 3.67% – Tehran had decided to suspend part of the inspections of the international atomic energy agency on nuclear sites. IAEA director Raphael Grossi negotiated a three-month bridging agreement. Upon expiration, in late May, audio and video recordings at nuclear sites will be destroyed and the Agency will not have access to them.
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