A chance perhaps to save the Vienna agreement on Iranian nuclear power concluded in 2015. Iran is ready to resume negotiations on its nuclear program in November, announced the Iranian deputy minister in charge of the file, Ali Baghéri, following a meeting in Brussels, Wednesday, October 27, with the European negotiator, Enrique Mora.

"I had a serious and constructive conversation with Enrique Mora on the essentials of a successful negotiation. We have agreed to start negotiations before the end of November. The exact date will be announced next week," a he said in a message on his Twitter account.

"There is nothing to announce for the moment" on the side of Brussels, a European source said after the meeting.

>> Iranian nuclear: Tehran will return "very soon" to the negotiating table

"After evaluating the talks between Ali Bagheri and Enrique Mora, we will decide the date on which we will enter into talks with the 4 + 1 group (of the five signatory states), but it will not be too late", for his part declared, in Tehran, the head of Iranian diplomacy, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian.

The EU urges the Iranians to resume negotiations initiated in Vienna to save the agreement reached in 2015, which was supposed to prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

They have been suspended since the election in June of a new Iranian president.

"The talks must be held in Vienna," insists in Brussels.

The Iranians had asked to meet Enrique Mora to "discuss the issues that remained unanswered" after their talks with the European negotiator on October 14 in Tehran.

"They want clarifications on the text that is on the table (in Vienna) and bilateral contacts with some of the signatory countries," said a European official last week.

But there was no question for the Europeans to negotiate anything bilaterally with the representatives of the Iranian regime.

International pressure

The head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, coordinator of negotiations on the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran (known by its acronym JCPOA), must consult the other signatories - as well as the United States, ready to return in this agreement denounced in 2018 by Donald Trump - before setting a date for the resumption of negotiations in Vienna.

The Iranian announcements were therefore deemed "premature" by the Europeans.

The agreement concluded between Iran on the one hand and the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Russia, France and Germany on the other, offered Tehran the lifting of part of the international sanctions which strangle its economy, in exchange for a drastic reduction in its nuclear program, placed under strict UN control.

The Americans are getting impatient and again warned on Monday that they are ready to take "other measures" if negotiations to save the Iran nuclear deal fail,

The "door" to diplomacy "is not going to stay open forever," warned US envoy for Iran Rob Malley.

"At some point, the JCPOA will have been too emptied of its meaning, because Iran will have made irreversible progress" in nuclear matters, he warned.

With AFP

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