EU says stalled Iran nuclear talks resume: EU

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Friday he believed a final deal was within reach, following fresh talks in Tehran.

Borel said this week EU envoy Enrique Mora had a “better-than-expected” mission to help revive the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers.

“Negotiations were suspended and are now being resumed,” Borrell told reporters on the sidelines of a G7 meeting in Germany.

“There is a vision to reach a final agreement.”

Mora held a two-day meeting with Iran’s chief negotiator Ali Bagheri in Tehran this week.

Meanwhile, Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani met with Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Ibrahim Raisi on Thursday to emphasize progress.

The 2015 deal provided Iran with sanctions in exchange for sanctions on its nuclear program so that it could not develop a nuclear weapon, something that Tehran has not always wanted to do.

Officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the agreement was abandoned in 2018 in life support by the then US President Donald Trump’s unilateral decision to withdraw and impose punitive sanctions.

It began to push Iran back on its own promises.

Bids have resumed to revive Trump’s departure agreement from office, with Mora playing a key role during a year of on-off talks in Vienna.

One of the main topics of discussion was Tehran’s demand to the United States to remove Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from a designated list of terrorist groups.

Borel said “this disagreement over what to do with the Revolutionary Guards” had hampered progress in the talks for two months.

He said Mora had taken the EU’s message to Tehran that “we cannot go on like this.”

“The answer has been positive enough,” Borel said.

“Things like this can’t be solved overnight. Suppose things were blocked and they were blocked.”

Borrell declined to comment on Mora’s tweet that he was briefly detained by German police at Frankfurt airport, only to say that “the issue is over.”

Mora tweeted earlier on Friday that he had been “detained by German police” on his way back to Brussels.

“Not a single explanation. An EU official in an official mission holding a Spanish diplomatic passport,” he wrote.

After his release, he tweeted that he had not yet received “any explanation for what appears to be a violation of the Vienna Convention.”

There was no immediate word from German police.