"What could be negotiated has been negotiated and is now in a final text," wrote EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on Twitter.

The document, which he sent to the governments involved, details the steps taken to return to the 2015 nuclear deal, the JCPOA.

Stephen Lowenstein

Political correspondent based in Vienna.

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Above all, the Americans, who “got out” under President Donald Trump in 2018 and imposed a dense network of sanctions against Iran, must return, but also the Iranians, who subsequently violated all the limits of their nuclear program and many control obligations.

The technical questions have been negotiated

“Of course, behind every technical question and every paragraph there is a political decision that has to be made in the capitals.

If these answers are positive, we can sign the deal,” writes Borrell.

The capitals are Tehran and Washington.

The other states that have been negotiating with Iran about its nuclear program in this format of P5 plus 1 (the permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) for almost two decades have always stood by the JCPOA, which strictly limits and monitors Iran's nuclear program and a lifting of international nuclear sanctions.

Despite all the geopolitical tensions, they are united in their interest in Iran not building nuclear weapons and thus triggering a nuclear arms race in the region.

Even Russia seems to be on board, although it's impossible to say for sure these days.

What is in the draft submitted by the EU has not been published.

In any case, the individual steps are unlikely to be spectacular, but extremely technically and legally detailed.

The structure results from the negotiations, which have been conducted in Vienna since April 2021 with interruptions.

Iran must be prepared to dismantle

In a “nuclear” part, it is to be regulated how Iran dismantles its enrichment plants and dilutes the uranium enriched to up to 60 percent (instead of the 3.67 percent permitted in the JCPOA) or exports it.

Tehran must also allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to implement the agreed tight control regime again.

Iran has restricted the IAEA's access and recently even switched off cameras, resulting in a gap in surveillance.

It was primarily such questions that had arisen in the past few months that made it necessary to “fine tune” the text, which had basically been finished since February.

One hurdle are the US sanctions

Then there's a part about American sanctions.

Under Trump, a thicket was deliberately created with a wide variety of justifications and legal bases, which is difficult to clear - especially since the negotiations were made more difficult by the fact that the Americans were only indirectly involved at Iran's request.

The Iranians also demanded "guarantees" that sanctions would not be imposed again after a change of government in Washington.

Of course, that is not possible in a democratic system.

In addition, the JCPOA is not an international legal agreement, but a politically agreed plan of action.

Supposedly a few fuses could still be installed.

A third part regulates the sequencing, i.e. which step follows which.

A "hat" sits over everything, which should be the basic declaration of intent of those involved.

The EU coordinated the talks

The European Union did not sit at the negotiating table, but its member states Germany and France, who still appear with Great Britain as the “E3” group, did.

However, the EU has taken on the role of coordinator of the talks.

Her foreign service under Borrell organized and structured, with EU chief diplomat Enrique Mora mostly doing the jigsaw work at the table.

With Borell's announcement that the negotiations were over, the EU climbed down from the president's chair, so to speak.

A senior diplomat even set a deadline, albeit not a hard one: "Very few weeks" is still time for the deal.

Two points of contention remain

Two thorny points of contention need to be clarified, which Iran would have liked to include in the JCPOA negotiations, but the West did not.

First, the IAEA has questions about traces of undeclared nuclear experiments, believed to predate 2003, about which Iran has so far given no credible explanation.

Tehran is demanding a line, IAEA boss Rafael Grossi insists on the integrity of his organization's principles.

He is supported by the P5 plus 1 in the IAEA Board of Governors, which has already passed a critical resolution.

This is also taking place in Vienna, but is a different matter from the JCPOA talks.

Second, Tehran wants its Revolutionary Guards to be removed from America's terror list, Washington doesn't want that.

Now they have to sort this out among themselves.

The deadline is related on the one hand to the well-advanced nuclear program and on the other hand to the American midterm elections in the fall.

European diplomats are aware that the debate in Iran is also very tough, intense and confrontational, perhaps even more so than elsewhere.

How it could go on

All of this suggests that the negotiations on the remaining points of contention are not being conducted in Vienna's Palais Coburg, in front of which the media tent has already been dismantled, but at a more discreet location.

It is not even certain that a deal, if successful, will be concluded with great fanfare and meetings of foreign ministers.

Perhaps this will happen quite soberly with a meeting of the "Joint Commission", as originally provided for in the JCPOA.

The American participant would then simply come back.