SWEIMEH, Jordan (Dispatches) — Iran’s Foreign Minister Hussein Amir-Abdollahian met Tuesday with EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on the sidelines of a summit in Jordan, an Iranian diplomatic source said.
The meeting, which was confirmed by Iran’s official news agency IRNA, comes at a time when negotiations in Vienna aimed at reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and returning the U.S. to compliance are stalled.
The 27-nation bloc’s nuclear negotiator Enrique Mora was at the meeting, the Iranian diplomatic source was quoted as saying. IRNA said his Iranian counterpart Ali Bagheri was also present.
Borrell tweeted that the meeting was “necessary… amidst deteriorating Iran-EU relations” and that they agreed to keep communications open and to restore the accord on the basis of the Vienna negotiations.
The landmark 2015 deal has been hanging by a thread since the unilateral withdrawal of the United States in 2018 under then-president Donald Trump.
Ahead of the Jordan summit on Tuesday, Amir-Abdollahian had said the gathering would be a “good opportunity” to revive negotiations on the issue.
His comments came a day before Jordan hosted the “Baghdad II” conference on Tuesday, bringing together key Middle East and international players -- including Iran and Saudi Arabia -- in a bid to defuse regional tensions.
“I hope that... we will see a change of approach and the American side will behave realistically,” Amir-Abdollahian said.
“I say clearly to the Americans; that they must choose between hypocrisy, and the request to reach an agreement and the United States’ return to the JCPOA,” he added.
Meanwhile, a UN nuclear agency team led by deputy director-general Massimo Aparo left Iran on Monday, after a one-day visit aimed at resolving a years-long impasse over an enquiry into alleged undeclared uranium particles in the country, ISNA news agency reported.
The International Atomic Energy Agency team met with Iranian officials including Muhammad Eslami, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, ISNA said.
The two parties discussed “future cooperation” among other issues, ISNA said.
The 2015 agreement gave Iran sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on its nuclear energy program.
But Washington unilaterally withdrew from the accord in 2018 under then-president Donald Trump, and the reimposition of draconian economic sanctions prompted Iran to begin rolling back on its own commitments.
Iran’s U.N. Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani insisted Iran’s negotiating team exercised “maximum flexibility” in trying to reach agreement and even introduced an “innovative solution to the remaining issues to break the impasse.” But he said the “unrealistic and rigid approach” of the United States led to the current stalled talks on the 2015 agreement, known as the JCPOA.
“Let’s make it clear: pressure, intimidation and confrontation are not solutions and will get nowhere,” Iravani said.
Iran is ready to resume talks and arrange a ministerial meeting “as soon as possible to declare the JCPOA restoration,” Iravani said. “This is achievable if the U.S. demonstrates genuine political will … The U.S. now has the ball in its court.”
Iravani emphasized that all of Iran’s nuclear activities “are peaceful” and said Iran is ready to engage the IAEA to resolve outstanding issues on nuclear safeguards.