Iran to hold nuclear talks with European powers on Friday

Technicians work inside a uranium conversion facility outside Isfahan, Iran. Photographer: Getty Images/Getty Images

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran, Britain, France and Germany will hold nuclear talks in Istanbul on Friday, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said early on Monday, following warnings by the three European countries that failure to resume negotiations would lead to international sanctions being reimposed on Iran.

“The meeting between Iran, Britain, France and Germany will take place at the deputy foreign minister level,” Esmaeil Baghaei was quoted by Iranian state media as saying.

The talks scheduled for Friday come after foreign ministers of the E3 nations, as those European countries are known, as well as the European Union’s foreign policy chief, held their first call on Thursday with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi since Israel and the U.S. attacked Iranian nuclear facilities a month ago.

The three European countries, along with China and Russia, are the remaining parties to a 2015 nuclear deal reached with Iran - from which the United States withdrew in 2018 - that lifted sanctions on the Middle Eastern country in return for restrictions on its nuclear program.

The E3 have said they would restore U.N. sanctions on Tehran via the “snapback mechanism” by the end of August if nuclear talks that were ongoing between Iran and the U.S. before the Israel-Iran air war do not resume or fail to produce concrete results.

“If EU/E3 want to have a role, they should act responsibly, and put aside the worn-out policies of threat and pressure, including the ‘snap-back’ for which they lack absolutely [any] moral and legal ground,” Araqchi said earlier in the week.

The snapback mechanism can be used to restore U.N. sanctions before the U.N. Security Council resolution enshrining the deal expires on October 18.

Prior to the Israel-Iran war, Tehran and Washington held five rounds of nuclear talks mediated by Oman but faced major stumbling blocks such as uranium enrichment in Iran, which Western powers want to bring down to zero to minimize any risk of weaponisation.

Tehran maintains its nuclear program is solely meant for civilian purposes.

(Reporting by Parisa Hafezi and Dubai Newsroom; Editing by Toby Chopra and Rod Nickel)