EU Attempts To Save Talks On Iran Nuclear Deal Amid Discord Between US, Iran - Borrell

The European Union is attempting to revive the talks on the Iran nuclear deal derailed due to Washington's reluctance to exempt Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) from the US terrorist list, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Saturday

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 07th May, 2022) The European Union is attempting to revive the talks on the Iran nuclear deal derailed due to Washington's reluctance to exempt Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) from the US terrorist list, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Saturday.

The IRGC, as a faction of the Iranian armed forces, plays a key role in safeguarding the Islamic republic's political system. The Quds Force, the IRGC's elite units handling predominantly overseas operations, was listed by the United States as a foreign terrorist organization back in 2007, while the entire IRGC was designated as terrorist only in 2019 by former US President Donald Trump, who was factually the one who broke the Iran nuclear deal by unilaterally withdrawing his country and reimposing sanctions on Tehran.

Borrell told the Financial Times that he is looking for a "middle way" to break a deadlock that threatens to roll back over a year of EU diplomatic efforts of fostering the US to rejoin the 2015 agreement and lift sanctions from Iran, with Tehran reducing its nuclear activities, in return.

"At a certain moment, I will have to say, as co-ordinator (of the Vienna talks) I make this proposal on the table, formally... the only equilibrium point possible would be this one," Borrell said, adding that the talks cannot continue indefinitely "because in the meantime Iran continues developing their nuclear programme.

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The Iran nuclear deal officially, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is now becoming even more relevant, as the West is fearing to spark another crisis with Iran, which may dissuade it from scaling up its oil exports amid rising energy prices and Western strive to replace Russian crude oil, the newspaper said.

"We Europeans will be very much beneficiaries from this deal, the situation has changed now. For us it was something... 'well we don't need it', now it would be very much interesting for us to have another (crude) supplier," Borrell said, adding that "the Americans need a diplomatic success."

Trump ordered the US unilateral withdrawal from the JCPOA in 2018 and imposed numerous sanctions on Iran, which in turn announced gradually reducing its commitment under the deal, removing restrictions on nuclear research and uranium enrichment. After taking office in January 2021, incumbent US President Joe Biden said he was seeking to revive the deal and renew US commitments under the JCPOA. Yet the negotiations launched in April 2021 have stalled, with both Washington and Tehran declining any concessions.