Iran, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom will hold nuclear talks in Istanbul on Friday, following warnings by the three European countries that failure to resume negotiations would lead to international sanctions being reimposed on Tehran. The talks are scheduled to take place at the deputy foreign minister level, according to Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman, Esmaeil Baghaei.
The European countries, along with China and Russia, are the remaining parties to a 2015 nuclear deal reached with Iran, from which the US withdrew in 2018. The deal had lifted sanctions on the Middle Eastern country in return for restrictions on its nuclear programme. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has emphasized that the European Union and its member states should act responsibly and put aside their worn-out policies of threat and pressure.
The E3 nations have said they would restore United Nations sanctions on Tehran by the end of August if nuclear talks that were ongoing between Iran and the US before Israel launched a surprise attack do not resume or fail to produce concrete results. Iran has accused the US of complicity in the Israeli attack, which killed top Iranian military officials, nuclear scientists, and hundreds of civilians.
In a recent development, Russian President Vladimir Putin held a surprise meeting in the Kremlin with Ali Larijani, the top adviser to Iran’s supreme leader on nuclear issues. According to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, Larijani conveyed assessments of the escalating situation in the Middle East and around the Iranian nuclear programme. Putin expressed Russia’s well-known positions on how to stabilise the situation in the region and on the political settlement of the Iranian nuclear programme.
The upcoming talks come as the international community remains concerned about the implications of the conflict on the global nuclear landscape. The Iranian nuclear programme has been a contentious issue, with Western powers seeking to limit Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and Iran insisting that its programme is solely for civilian purposes.
Before 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 minimise any risk of weaponisation. The talks in Istanbul will likely focus on finding a way forward to address these concerns and prevent further escalation.