Iran Nuclear Talks To Resume Thursday As US Complains Tehran ‘Demanding More, Concedes Less’

The result of last week’s resumption of nuclear talks in Vienna between Iran and signatories to the original Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action deal is being described in Western sources as Tehran demanding more from the US while willing to concede less. 

“More than five months after multilateral nuclear talks with Iran were paused before the country’s presidential elections in June, a new negotiating team arrived in Vienna in late November with additional demands and fewer concessions than its predecessors,” NATO’s Atlantic Council lamented in an op-ed.

Over the weekend Biden administration officials questioned the Iranian side’s “seriousness” – suggesting they came to the table unwilling to compromise from the start while demanding the US drop all Trump era sanctions. But on Tuesday Iranian official media announced that Vienna talks will resume Thursday.

“The date for the resumption of the P4 + 1 talks in Vienna has been finalized,” Iran’s Tasnim news agency has reported. “Iran, P4 + 1 resume talks in Vienna on Thursday.”

But despite Iran’s willingness to continue the dialogue toward restoration of a deal, White House officials are casting severe doubts on the possibility that something firm can be reached:

A US official said Saturday that Iran had backed away from all its previous compromises on reviving the 2015 nuclear deal and that the US would not allow Iran to “slow walk” the international negotiations while at the same time ramping up its atomic activities.

The warning came a day after Washington hit out at Iran, saying talks with world powers on a return to the 2015 nuclear accord had stalled because Tehran “does not seem to be serious.”

A senior administration official was cited further as saying: “We can’t accept a situation in which Iran accelerates its nuclear program and slow walks its nuclear diplomacy,” according to an AFP and Times of Israel report.

Tasnim reports the #Iran nuclear negotiations will resume on Thursday. https://t.co/g58WcYWRSU

— Jason Brodsky (@JasonMBrodsky) December 7, 2021

Meanwhile, Israel is currently trying to persuade the Biden White House to initiate limited military strikes on Iranian assets in the Middle East region. In fresh statements Tuesday, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said his military is fighting “bad forces” in the region “day and night”. Israeli media details:

Hours after Syrian media accused Israel of striking the port city of Latakia, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said on Tuesday that the military was constantly fighting “bad forces” in the Middle East.

“We’re pushing back on the bad forces of this region day and night,” he said in English alongside Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades. “We won’t stop for one second. This happens almost daily.”

“In the face of destructive forces we will continue to act, we will be persistent, and we will not tire,” Bennett pledged.

The referenced strike was an Israeli air assault on Latakia port in Syria. It happened overnight in the early Tuesday hours, with suggestions that Israel was targeting Iranian weapons shipments, though precisely what was in the shipping containers that were hit and engulfed in flames remains unknown and unconfirmed.