Stalled Accommodations over Iran’s nuclear programme have been unblocked after fresh addresses in Tehran, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Friday, adding that he believed a final deal was within reach.
Borrell said a charge by EU envoy Enrique Mora this week to help revive the 2015 nuclear pact between Iran and world powers had gone “ better than anticipated”.
“ The accommodations had stalled and now they’ve been restarted,” Borrell told journalists on the sidelines of a G7 meeting in Germany.
“ There’s a perspective of reaching a final agreement.”
Mora held two days of meetings with Iran’s principal moderator Ali Bagheri in Tehran this week.
The emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, meanwhile met Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Ebrahim Raisi on Thursday to push for progress.
The 2015 deal gave Iran warrants relief in exchange for checks on its nuclear programme to guarantee that it couldn’t develop nuclear armament, a commodity Tehran has always denied wanting to do.
Formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the agreement was left on life support in 2018 by also-US chairman Donald Trump’s unilateral decision to withdraw and put chastising warrants.
This urged Iran to begin rolling back its own commitments.
The departure of Trump from office has renewed flings to revive the accord, with Mora playing a crucial part during a time of on-off addresses in Vienna.
Among the main sticking points in the accommodations has been Tehran’s demand for the US to remove Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from a designated list of terrorist groups.
Borrell said “ these dissensions on what to do about the Revolutionary Guards” had hampered progress in the addresses for two months.
He said Mora had taken the EU’s communication to Tehran “ that we could not continue like this”.
“ The answer has been positive enough,” Borrell said. “This kind of effect can not be answered overnight. Let’s say effects were blocked and they’ve been deblocked.”
Borrell declined to note on Mora’s tweet that he’d been compactly held at Frankfurt field by German police, saying only that “ the issue is over”.
Mora had twittered before on Friday that he’d been “ retained by the German police” while travelling back to Brussels. “ Not a single explanation. An EU functionary on a sanctioned charge holding a Spanish politic passport,” he wrote.
Retained by the German police at the Francfort airport on my way to Brussels, back from Teheran. Not a single explanation. An EU official on an official mission holding a Spanish diplomatic passport. Took out my passport and my phones.
After being released, he twittered he’d still not entered “ any explanation for what seems a violation of the Vienna Convention”.
Now released along with with my two colleagues, the EU Ambassador to UN Vienna and the head of the EEAS Iran task force. We were kept separated. Refusal to give any explanation for what seems a violation of the Vienna Convention.
