Iran Nuke Talks Resume After 5-Month Delay; West Asks Tehran ‘Are You Serious Or Stalling?’

European Union officials have confirmed that Iran nuclear talks have restarted in Vienna on Monday after a five-month hiatus. Earlier this month Tehran officials said they planned to rejoin talks for a restored Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal with the West, which includes indirect talks with the US via European mediators. 

It’s the first time Iran has come to the table since recently elected Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi took power in August. But Reuters and others are noting that with Western powers “increasingly frustrated” it remains that “hopes of a breakthrough appear slim”. 

Already the Iranian side’s 40-strong delegation is being pressed by Western officials over whether they are stilling or serious – given talks haven’t been held since June, when the 6th round of talks wrapped up with little to no progress, resulting in widespread accusations Tehran is stalling in order to covertly build-up its nuclear and uranium enrichment capabilities.

US envoy for the negotiations Robert Malley highlighted in a weekend statement that the clock is ticking for the Islamic Republic to show that it’s serious: “If Iran thinks it can use this time to build more leverage and then come back and say they want something better, it simply won’t work. We and our partners won’t go for it,” he said in a BBC interview. 

Both sides currently see the other’s demands as “unreasonable” – meaning there’s sharp disagreement upon even re-entering dialogue. Iran’s unwavering position has been the immediate dropping of all Trump-era sanctions, given it was the US that unilaterally exited the 2015 JCPOA deal in the first place: 

“To ensure any forthcoming agreement is ironclad, the West needs to pay a price for having failed to uphold its part of the bargain. As in any business, a deal is a deal, and breaking it has consequences,” Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, Ali Bagheri Kani said in defiant column in the Financial Times on Sunday.

Through the coronavirus pandemic the Iranian economy and infrastructure has been reeling, which officials say is largely the fault of the US-led sanctions regimen, which has also served to cripple hospitals and the medical and pharmaceutical sectors, among others.

Video from inside the #IranTalks that have just started again in Vienna for the seventh round. It looks like seated next to #Iran‘s deputy foreign minister is Mehdi Safari and Reza Najafi. pic.twitter.com/oMqEuc6IPV

— Jason Brodsky (@JasonMBrodsky) November 29, 2021

This is why Iran has said it’s not about both sides taking equal steps, but in reality it’s Washington that must “return” to compliance with its side of the deal: “The principle of ‘mutual compliance’ cannot form a proper base for negotiations since it was the US government which unilaterally left the deal,” the top Iranian negotiator has stated.

Meanwhile both Israel and the US have made veiled threats that if there’s not breakthrough, the ‘military option’ remains on the table in order to prevent Iran’s nuclear progress. Tehran leaders have insisted, however, that the program is for peaceful domestic energy purposes.