“The fifth round of the Vienna talks on #JCPOA is under way. As of now, there are no plans for the sixth,” Mikhail Ulyanov, the Russian ambassador to the international organizations in Vienna, said in a post on his Twitter account on Sunday, referring to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
Under former President Donald Trump, the United States in May 2018 unilaterally withdrew from the JCPOA. Trump also initiated a “maximum pressure” policy against Iran, prompting Tehran to take remedial measures by gradually reducing its nuclear commitments under the deal.
Trump’s successor, Joe Biden, says his administration wants to rejoin the deal, but Tehran says it must first lift all the sanctions Washington imposed on Iran in the aftermath of leaving the JCPOA practically and verifiably before it can come back.
Representatives of Iran and the other five signatories to the nuclear agreement, namely Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China, have been engaged in the Vienna process since early April with the purpose of finding ways to bring the United States back to the deal and prepare the ground for its full implementation.
The fifth round of the Vienna talks on #JCPOA is under way. As of now, there are no plans for the sixth. The negotiators proceed from the understanding that the current round should be final. https://t.co/Ld4D9HBSv2
— Mikhail Ulyanov (@Amb_Ulyanov) May 30, 2021
In his tweet, Ulyanov spoke about the likelihood of the last round of talks in Vienna and said, “The negotiators proceed from the understanding that the current round should be final.”
On Wednesday, Tehran and the other participants in the Vienna talks said there had been some progress, but that differences still remained.
“We have made some progress on them,” Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi, who is the top negotiator of the Islamic Republic, said during an interview with Press TV on the sidelines of the discussions. “But we are still not in a position to say that we have a clear answer for them and a clear solution, actually, for these key issues.”
Speaking at a weekly press conference on Tuesday, the spokesman for the Iranian administration Ali Rabiei also said Iran and the five major world powers have reached preliminary agreements on how to revive the JCPOA, but the fundamental steps necessary for that goal require political decisions to be made, particularly in Washington.
“Much of the negotiations about the removal of the sanctions and the steps by [all] sides to return to compliance [with the Iran deal in its original form] have been carried out and preliminary understandings have been reached,” Rabiei said. “Small differences remain — over which negotiations will continue until final results are achieved.”
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