Iran-E3 nuclear talks in progress to overcome misunderstandings: FM
Iran and the European troika have launched negotiations since several weeks ago to clear up misunderstandings and move towards cooperation, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said in an interview with China’s Phoenix Television in Tehran.
“Iran has begun negotiations with Germany, France and the UK for weeks. These negotiations started in Norway and have continued until recently in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates,” Tasnim news agency quoted Amir-Abdollahian as saying.
He made the remarks when asked if Iran and the US are involved in indirect negotiations despite the tensions in Tehran’s relations with the West.
In an interview with Phoenix China Network, the foreign minister discussed the most important regional and international issues, including Iran’s membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, relations with China, and sanctions-lifting negotiations.
During the interview, Amir-Abdollahian highlighted Iran’s diplomatic efforts to have the sanctions lifted.
He said the purpose of the talks between Iran and the European troika is to find a way to “overcome the misunderstandings” and enable Iran and the E3 to take the path to “better interaction and cooperation”.
“However, our relations with the European Union and with the bulk of Europe are normal and progressive,” he added.
In 2018, the US left the 2015 nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and re-imposed the sanctions that it had lifted. Bowing under American pressure, Washington’s Western allies, including the UK, then started toeing the US’s sanction line closely and stopped their trade activities with Tehran.
UK diplomat summoned
On Thursday, UK’s ambassador to the UN, Barbara Woodward, accused Iran of violating the UNSC Resolution 2231, which endorses the JCPOA.
Iran summoned the UK’s chargé d’affaires to Tehran to the Foreign Ministry over the British ambassador’s “destructive and interventionist” remarks about the Islamic Republic.
Isabelle Marsh was summoned by the Foreign Ministry’s director-general for Western Europe hours after Woodward addressed the United Nations Security Council faulting Iran’s peaceful nuclear energy work.
Woodward faulted a set of retaliatory steps that the Islamic Republic has been taking, without mentioning the Western countries’ violations of the deal that have prompted the Islamic Republic’s reprisal. Iran has said it would only reverse its reprisal if the US and the E3 resumed their commitments to the JCPOA.
Informing the British chargé d’affaires about Iran’s protest at the envoy’s remarks, the Iranian Foreign Ministry official strongly denounced them as meddlesome accusations.
He advised the British authorities “to refrain from walking into traps that are laid by the Zionist regime [of Israel] and terrorist groups.”