TEHRAN, Iran, 27 Mar: A leading European Union diplomat held talks in Tehran on Sunday, Iran\u2019s state-run media reported, amid hopes that an agreement to restore Iran\u2019s tattered nuclear deal with world powers could be completed.
\nThe meetings between the EU\u2019s envoy, Enrique Mora, and top Iranian officials come at a sensitive moment for talks to revive the deal, as the glimmers of a resolution to some of the thorniest issues in the negotiations have emerged.
\nThe report on the talks in Tehran gave scant detail, saying only that the diplomats discussed the latest on the nuclear agreement, with Iran\u2019s top nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani repeating that Iran believed a deal was within reach if America was \u201crealistic\u201d in its demands.
\nFormer President Donald Trump abandoned the nuclear deal in 2018 and re-imposed crushing sanctions. Iran gradually breached the agreement with a massive expansion of its nuclear work.
\nNuclear talks broke off earlier this month as last-minute wrangles in Vienna coincided with Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine and financial sanctions imposed by the West on Moscow.
\nBut officials have since made encouraging noises. Russia appeared to back down from its earlier demand that its trade with Iran be exempted from Western sanctions.
\nAnd for the first time, Iran\u2019s top diplomat on Saturday publicly signaled flexibility over Tehran\u2019s demand that Washington stop designating the country\u2019s Islamic Revolutionary Guard, its powerful paramilitary force, as a foreign terrorist organization.
\nThe prospect of the designation\u2019s removal had alarmed America\u2019s Mideast allies, such as Israel, which fiercely opposed the original nuclear deal and argued that easing sanctions on the Revolutionary Guard would embolden Iranian-backed militant groups from Hezbollah in Lebanon to the Houthis in Yemen.
\nIn a visible sign that shared regional anxiety over a renewed nuclear deal was growing, the Israeli government hastily arranged an unprecedented summit of top diplomats from Arab countries that have normalized ties with Israel along with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
\n\u201cWe are both committed, both determined that Iran will never acquire a nuclear weapon,\u201d Blinken said alongside Israel\u2019s foreign minister, seeking to reassure his jittery counterparts before the gathering.
\nRemarks on Sunday by the U.S. special envoy for Iran, Robert Malley, underscored the U.S. limitations that have frustrated allies. He declined to discuss details of the nuclear negotiations, but reiterated that America had failed to secure a broader deal with Iran that would restrict its ballistic missiles program and curb its regional military policies.
\n\u201cIt would have been better, but (the nuclear deal) was not intended to, it wasn\u2019t able to address the other issues,\u201d Malley told the Doha Forum, a Middle East policy conference in Qatar. \u201cMany in the region view the IRGC in the same way we do. … But we know this is not a deal that\u2019s going to address that.\u201d
\nHowever, Malley was quick to stress that no matter what happens to the Guard\u2019s terrorism designation, separate sanctions over its ballistic missile development and alleged human rights violations would remain.
\nAnxieties over a restored deal also were on stark display in Tehran, laying bare deep fissures in Iran\u2019s divided political system.
\nHard-liners opposing any hint of rapprochement with the West appeared to fret about possible Iranian compromises after Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian told state TV that the Revolutionary Guard had accepted that the terrorist designation would stay in place so that Iran could pursue \u201cwhatever is necessary for the interests of the country.\u201d
\nHossein Shariatmadari, appointed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as editor-in-chief of hard-line Kayhan daily, rebuked Amirabdollahian\u2019s remarks as \u201cunexpected and strange.\u201d
\nIn an interview late Saturday with the semiofficial Fars news agency, Shariatmadari insisted that the foreign minister had misunderstood the Revolutionary Guard when he spoke on the force\u2019s behalf.
\n\u201cAttributing this statement to Guard commanders does not correspond to any of the well-known characteristics of Guard commanders,\u201d he said, adding that Amirabdollahian had falsely given the impression of the Guard\u2019s \u201csurrender.\u201d
\nFrom the Doha Forum, Sayyid Kamal Kharrazi, a foreign policy advisor to Iran\u2019s supreme leader, also struck a tough line, rejecting the United States\u2019 continued sanctions on the Revolutionary Guard.
\n\u201cA national army cannot be listed as a terrorist group,\u201d Kharrazi told the audience. \u201cThat is very important for Iranians to have the IRGC removed from the list. … They are not going to compromise on that.\u201d
\nIn an Instagram post, Amirabdollahian expressed regret that his comments had been \u201cmisinterpreted\u201d and tried to assuage domestic unease by promising he had not backed down from any Iranian \u201cred lines.\u201d
\nStill, ambiguity prevailed as Malley and Kharrazi offered starkly different assessments from Doha about the chances of the deal\u2019s looming revival.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s imminent,\u201d said Kharrazi.
\nMalley appeared more skeptical.
\n\u201cI can\u2019t be confident it\u2019s imminent,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not just around the corner and it\u2019s not inevitable.\u201d AP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
TEHRAN, Iran, 27 Mar: A leading European Union diplomat held talks in Tehran on Sunday, Iran\u2019s state-run media reported, amid hopes that an agreement to restore Iran\u2019s tattered nuclear deal with world powers could be completed. The meetings between the EU\u2019s envoy, Enrique Mora, and top Iranian officials come at a sensitive moment for talks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-187461","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187461\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}