European powers ‘plan fresh nuclear talks’ with Iran

European powers plan fresh talks with Iran on its nuclear programme in the coming days, the first since the US attacked Iranian nuclear facilities a month ago, a German diplomatic source told AFP on Sunday.

Britain, France and Germany, known as the E3, “are in contact with Iran to schedule further talks for the coming week”, the source said.

The trio had recently warned that international sanctions against Iran could be reactivated if Tehran does not return to the negotiating table.

Iran’s Tasnim news agency also reported that Tehran had agreed to hold talks with the three European countries, citing an unnamed source.

Consultations are ongoing regarding a date and location for the talks, the report said.

“Iran must never be allowed to acquire a nuclear weapon,” the German source said.

“That is why Germany, France and the United Kingdom are continuing to work intensively in the E3 format to find a sustainable and verifiable diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear programme,” the source added.

Israel and Western nations have long accused Iran of seeking to develop nuclear weapons, a charge Tehran has consistently denied.

On June 13, Israel launched a wave of surprise strikes on its regional nemesis, targeting key military and nuclear facilities.

The United States launched its own set of strikes against Iran’s nuclear programme on June 22, hitting the uranium enrichment facility at Fordo, in Qom province south of Tehran, as well as nuclear sites in Isfahan and Natanz. Iran and the United States had held several rounds of nuclear negotiations through Omani mediators before Israel launched its 12-day war against Iran.

However, US President Donald Trump’s decision to join Israel in striking Iranian nuclear facilities effectively ended the talks.

The E3 countries last met with Iranian representatives in Geneva on June 21 -- just one day before the US strikes.

Also Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin held a surprise meeting in the Kremlin with Ali Larijani, top adviser to Iran’s supreme leader on nuclear issues.

Larijani “conveyed assessments of the escalating situation in the Middle East and around the Iranian nuclear programme”, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said of the unannounced meeting.

Putin had expressed Russia’s “well-known positions on how to stabilise the situation in the region and on the political settlement of the Iranian nuclear programme”, he added.

Moscow has a cordial relationship with Iran’s clerical leadership and provides crucial backing for Tehran but did not swing forcefully behind its partner even after the United States joined Israel’s bombing campaign.

Iran and world powers struck a deal in 2015 called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which placed significant restrictions on Tehran’s nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief. But the hard-won deal began to unravel in 2018, during Trump’s first presidency, when the United States walked away from it and reimposed sanctions on Iran.

European countries have in recent days threatened to trigger the deal’s “snapback” mechanism, which allows the reimposition of sanctions in the event of non-compliance by Iran.

After a call with his European counterparts on Friday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the Western allies had “absolutely no moral (or) legal grounds” for reactivating the snapback sanctions.

He elaborated in a post to social media Sunday.

“Through their actions and statements, including providing political and material support to the recent unprovoked and illegal military aggression of the Israeli regime and the US... the E3 have relinquished their role as ‘Participants’ in the JCPOA,” said Araghchi.

That made any attempt to reinstate the terminated UN Security Council resolutions “null and void”, he added.

“Iran has shown that it is capable of defeating any delusional ‘dirty work’ but has always been prepared to reciprocate meaningful diplomacy in good faith,” Araghchi wrote.

However, the German source said Sunday that “if no solution is reached over the summer, snapback remains an option for the E3”.

Ali Velayati, an adviser to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said last week there would be no new nuclear talks with the United States if they were conditioned on Tehran abandoning its uranium enrichment activities.

Agence France-Presse