Talks in Vienna on reviving Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world power will continue “for a few days” before “the two most relevant delegations will go back home to receive more precise instructions,” a European Union official told the press on Friday [April 16].

“The two most relevant delegations” – Iran and the United States – have been trying to resolve a stand-off over who should move first in reviving the deal, which the US left in 2018 before imposing stringent sanctions that prompted Tehran to expand its nuclear program beyond the deal’s limits.

Two expert groups in Vienna have been reviewing which sanctions contravene the deal – the JCPOA, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – and which aspects of the Iranian nuclear program contravene Iran’s JCPOA commitments.

Senior diplomats are meeting formally under the auspices of the JCPOA Joint Commission, of which the US is not a member, leaving it to deal with the process indirectly, with its Vienna delegation in a separate hotel.  The formal talks resumed on Thursday with China, Iran, France, Germany, Russia and the United Kingdom, the remaining JCPOA signatories.

Just five days after Sunday’s explosion at Iran’s Natanz facility, widely attributed to Israel, Ali Akbar Salehi, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, said Friday Tehran had begun uranium enrichment to 60 percent at Natanz. The site was visited by inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency Wednesday, but the agency has made no comment on Sunday’s blast nor on reports quoting US intelligence officials that it had set back the program by six to nine months. Iran began enriching uranium to 20 percent, above the 3.67 precent limit of the JCPOA, in January at the separate Ferdow plant.

Salehi claimed Iran was enriching 9 grams of uranium to 60 percent every hour – a move bringing it far closer to the 90 percent enrichment required for a nuclear weapon. The JCPOA was designed to reduce the ‘break out’ time, the period required to produce a crude device, to at least a year.

Iranian officials expressed caution over the talks even before Sunday’s explosion at Natanz brought calls in Tehran to abandon negotiations. Iran Deputy Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, leading the delegation in Vienna, said on Thursday the process had been undermined by this week’s European sanctions against Iran over its treatment of protestors two years ago.

Araghchi said that the new EU sanctions, targeting eight Iranian militia commanders, police chiefs and three prisons, added to the list that Iran wanted lifted as incompatible with the JCPOA, which required signatories allow Iran "full benefit" of sanctions-lifting.

Araghchi also stressed the importance of ending US sanctions threatening third parties – referring to secondary measures over oil exports and financial links with Iran. By one count the Trump administration levied 700 sanctions on grounds other than the nuclear program but which officials openly said were designed to complicate any attempt by a successor administration to revive the JCPOA. Tehran has spoken of Trump's “imposed, re-imposed and relabelled sanctions.”  

There has also been speculation that Robert Malley, the US special envoy on Iran, would offer to lift key sanctions levied by Trump while retaining some so as to protect President Joe Biden from attacks at home from critics and lobbyists. But this position has not been expressed publicly, and it is far from clear how it would square with the work of the expert group in Vienna nor how it would be received in Tehran.