Europe’s most influential countries – the UK, Germany, and France – are expected to hold talks with Iran on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program in Istanbul on Friday, a senior Iranian official said on Monday.
“The meeting between Iran, Britain, France, and Germany will take place at the deputy foreign minister level,” Esmaeil Baghaei, a spokesperson for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, was quoted as saying by Iranian media.
The European countries, collectively known as E3, are parties to the 2025 nuclear deal together with China and Russia. The U.S. withdrew from the pact in 2018 during President Donald Trump’s first term in office, and re-imposed sanctions on Iran’s oil industry and exports.
Although the other parties remain in the nuclear deal, the U.S. sanctions crippled Iran’s oil exports, and Western majors withdrew from the Islamic Republic a year or two after returning, to comply with the U.S. sanctions.
Last week, E3 diplomats told Iran that they would restore UN sanctions on Iran under the so-called snapback mechanism unless Tehran resumes negotiations on its nuclear program and these talks yield concrete results by the end of August.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi posted on X after a teleconference with E3 on Friday that “If EU/E3 want to have a role, they should act responsibly, and put aside the worn-out policies of threat and pressure, including the “snap-back” for which they lack absolutely no moral and legal ground.”
The minister also criticized the U.S., saying it was the United States “that left the negotiation table in June this year and chose a military option instead, not Iran.”
“Any new round of talks is only possible when the other side is ready for a fair, balanced, and mutually beneficial nuclear deal,” Araghchi added.
The U.S. and Iran held several rounds of talks before June, when Israel attacked Iranian nuclear and military sites and the U.S. bombed three nuclear facilities.
Iran’s uranium enrichment efforts have been a major sticking point, with the U.S. insisting that enrichment is a “very, very clear red line.”
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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