Vienna talks on nuclear deal to resume only after new President takes office: Iran

Negotiations between Iran and European powers in Vienna that are aimed at salvaging the nuclear deal will not resume before the new government takes office in Tehran in August, an Iranian official said on Saturday.

The Islamic republic is in talks since April in Vienna with major powers on reviving its troubled 2015 nuclear agreement.

Ultra-conservative Ebrahim Raisi won a presidential election in June and will on August 5 replace moderate President Hassan Rouhani, who has served the constitutionally permitted maximum of two consecutive terms.

“We’re in a transition period… #Vienna_talks must thus obviously await our new administration,” Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, said on Twitter.

“This is what every democracy demands,” added Araghchi, who is also head of the country’s nuclear negotiation team.

The nuclear deal, signed in 2015 during the Obama administration, offered Tehran relief from international sanctions in exchange for limiting its nuclear program but Obama’s successor Donald Trump withdrew from it and reimposed sanctions in 2018.

The current President of the United States Joe Biden has said that he is ready to return to the deal and has engaged in indirect negotiations with Iran as the accord’s remaining other state parties — Britain, China, France, Germany, and Russia — hold talks in Vienna.

The sixth round of talks concluded on June 20 and dates for the next round have not been fixed.

Iran’s ultraconservative camp, which deeply distrusts the US, has repeatedly attacked Rouhani over the failing nuclear deal. Still, there is hope for the deal as Iran’s senior political figures, including Raisi, have voiced broad agreement that the country must seek an end to the punishing US sanctions.

Rouhani had repeatedly promised that he would succeed in getting the US to lift sanctions before the end of his term, but on Wednesday indicated this would no longer be possible, noting that negotiations would not be complete before he left office.

He also suggested his outgoing government was not given enough leeway to complete the talks.

Ultimate political power in Iran rests with the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who gave the green light to both the original nuclear agreement and the efforts to revive it.