Iran may accept European Union nuclear deal

A top Iranian diplomat said Tehran may be willing to accept a new proposal from the EU for a nuclear deal if its demands are met.

The EU has presented a “final” proposal to Iran to strengthen nuclear assurances nearly a year and a half after indirect talks with Washington began.

A top Iranian official said that Tehran may be willing to accept a new proposal from the European Union to reach a nuclear deal if its demands are met, according to reports on Friday.

An Iranian diplomat told state news agency IRNA that reviving the 2015 nuclear deal could be “acceptable” if the EU “provides assurances,”

The EU said on Monday that it had presented a “final” proposal to Iran to strengthen nuclear assurances nearly a year and a half after indirect talks with Washington and Tehran began.

“What can be negotiated has been negotiated, and it’s now in a final text,” the E.U. foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell Fontelles, said on Twitter Monday.

For months, Western officials have warned that time is running out to shore up negotiations, but an EU official told Reuters on Friday that a final decision on a deal will be reached in “very, very few weeks.”

The Iranian government does not appear to have commented publicly on the latest proposal, but an unidentified Iranian diplomat told a state-run newspaper that “proposals by the EU can be acceptable if they provide Iran with assurance on the issues of safeguards, sanctions, and guarantees.”

It is unclear what guarantees Iran is now seeking, despite the fact that talks have consistently stalled over the last 15 months, owing to two major sticking points.

After former President Trump withdrew from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and slapped Iran with harsh sanctions, Tehran demanded assurances from the US that no future president would breach the agreement.

Despite assurances from the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, that Iran was complying with the JCOPA, the Trump administration reneged on the agreement in 2018 due to frustration over Tehran’s continued testing of ballistic missiles.

By 2019, Iran, struggling under crippling sanctions, claimed that Washington had terminated the JCPOA and resumed nuclear development.

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