Less than a week after the Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister and the head of the negotiating team for the nuclear talks, Ali Bagheri Kani, suddenly returned to Vienna to continue the eighth round of talks with the powers, today (Sunday) the coordinator of the talks on behalf of the European Union dropped a strong hint that this time an agreement will probably be completed.
The mediator, Enrique Mora, who has actually been trying for several months to formulate compromises that would be acceptable to both the US and Iran regarding the conditions for revitalizing the 2015 nuclear agreement, told reporters that there had been "some progress" in the talks, which, as mentioned, were resumed last week after several months of stagnation.
"We are making progress and I assume we will complete the negotiations soon."
When asked if he was optimistic, Mora replied: "Yes, of course."
If that wasn't enough, he said, in response to a question, that the talks are expected to last at most "a few more days".
As you may remember, since President Joe Biden came to power in the US, he has held several rounds of indirect talks with Tehran about the possibility of both sides returning to implement the nuclear agreement (the US withdrew from it, and therefore does not hold direct talks with Iran in this regard).
In the last round of talks that began at the beginning of the year, the parties succeeded in drafting a new agreement that actually restores Iran to the restrictions it undertook in the original agreement, and on the other hand removes the American sanctions that were imposed on Iran when the Trump administration withdrew from the agreement.
But the agreement was not completed for political reasons: Iran conditions its entry into force on the removal of the Revolutionary Guards from the US State Department's list of terrorist organizations, but Biden made it clear that he would not do so because it was not a step that the US committed to under the original agreement.
The current talks in Vienna, which are actually the continuation of the round that started in the winter (the eighth round) apparently include different wordings that will allow Iran to withdraw from this demand.
Recently, the European Union's foreign policy coordinator, Joseph Borrell, said that he formulated a new proposal and even made visits to both Washington and Tehran to make it sound.
According to him, failure to accept it will allow for a "severe nuclear crisis" and added that this is "the best possible offer".
The International Atomic Energy Agency also made it clear that without a new agreement, the activity of monitoring the Iranian nuclear program will reach an irreversible state and, in fact, it will not be possible to know what its true status is even if the enforcement measures are returned.
Iran in recent weeks has succeeded in enriching enough uranium for a bomb, and has even said that it has the technical capabilities to do so if it wishes.
As you may recall, in recent years Iran has increased the rate and level of uranium enrichment in a way that grossly violates the 2015 agreement along with operating advanced centrifuges in underground facilities in Purdue.
According to a report from last week in "Iran International", at the underground facility in Purdue, which according to the nuclear agreement is prohibited from carrying out advanced enrichment activities, preparations are being made for the possibility of a "nuclear break-in", that is, enrichment to a level sufficient for an atomic bomb (around 90% purity) if and the instruction will be accepted.
According to the report, the hacking will begin if Iran is attacked, assuming that an attack on Iran will focus on the more exposed facilities such as Bentanz.
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