An upcoming meeting in Brussels to discuss resuming talks.. Washington: Reviving the nuclear agreement with Iran is going through a critical stage

A senior US official said - on Monday - that efforts to revive the Iran nuclear deal are now in a "critical phase", while the European Union announced an expected meeting this week with an Iranian negotiator in Brussels to discuss the resumption of talks.

Washington's envoy on Iran, Robert Malley, warned that Tehran's justifications for not resuming talks on the 2015 nuclear deal had "become too weak".

Mali told reporters that Washington is "increasingly concerned that Tehran will continue to delay its return to talks, but it also has other tools to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, and will use them if necessary."

"We are at a critical stage of efforts to find out the possibility of reviving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action," he added, referring to the nuclear agreement. "The suspension has exceeded several months, and the official justifications provided by Iran for this halt have become very weak," he added.

Mali said that the opportunity for the United States and Iran to resume compliance with the agreement will eventually expire, but he stressed that Washington will remain ready to engage in diplomacy with Iran even as Washington considers other options to prevent Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Mali: Washington is increasingly concerned that Tehran will continue to delay its return to talks (agencies)

In the same context, the spokesman for the European Union's High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy Peter Stano said that the Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri will meet this week with the European negotiator Enrique Mora in Brussels, to discuss the resumption of talks in Vienna.

"A meeting between the two men is scheduled this week," Stano said, but "no meeting is scheduled with Josep Borrell," the coordinator of negotiations on the 2015 nuclear deal.

Strict penalties

Former US President Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement in 2018, and re-imposed tough US sanctions on Tehran.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian had previously confirmed that his country had told Western countries that it would not evade the dialogue table, and that negotiations related to reviving the nuclear agreement would resume soon and at the appropriate time.

These negotiations began last April in Vienna, between Iran on the one hand, France, Britain, Russia, China and Germany on the other, and these countries are still members of the 2015 agreement on Iran's nuclear program.