Iran says will coordinate with EU on next stage of trying to revive JCPOA

Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations says Tehran will "coordinate" with the European Union on the next stage of talks aimed at reviving the ailing 2015 deal, following two days of fresh negotiations in the Qatari capital of Doha.

"Our team is ready to engage constructively to reach a deal," Majid Takht-Ravanchi said in a post on his Twitter account after he delivered a speech at a meeting of the UN Security Council on Thursday.

The top Iranian diplomat added that the sides to the deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), can reach a final agreement on the revival of the multilateral agreement in case of the US acts realistically and shows seriousness.

"If US acts realistically & shows serious intention to implement its obligations, agreement is not out of reach," Takht-Ravanchi said.

The Doha talks started on Tuesday, in a high-stakes diplomatic process aimed at breaking the stalemate in efforts to restore the JCPOA, with EU coordinator Enrique Mora shuttling between Iran's top negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani and Robert Malley, the US special envoy for Iran.

At the end of the talks on Wednesday, Iran and the EU said they would keep in touch "about the continuation of the route and the next stage of the talks."

The EU is tasked with coordinating indirect negotiations between Iran and the United States during the process. Iran does not sit down with the US as it is no longer a party to the deal.

The talks in Doha follow several rounds of negotiations in the Austrian capital of Vienna since April last year to restore the JCPOA, which was unilaterally abandoned by former US President Donald Trump in May 2018.

In quitting the agreement, Trump restored sanctions on Iran as part of what he called the “maximum pressure” campaign against the country. Those sanctions are being enforced to this day by the Joe Biden administration, even though it has repeatedly acknowledged that the policy has been a failure.

The Vienna talks reached an impasse and were suspended in March over Washington’s refusal to remove all the post-JCPOA sanctions, including the "foreign terrorist organizations" designation of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC).

Iran has also demanded that the US provide guarantees a future administration would not withdraw from a restored deal again, something the Biden administration has not been able to do.

The Doha talks kicked off just a few days after European Union foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, visited Tehran seeking to break the impasse.

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