Borrell: Iran asked for ‘some adjustments’ to EU’s nuclear deal proposal

By AFP 23 August 2022, 2:20 pm

Edit

European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell gives a statement after Belgrade-Pristina Dialogue at the EU headquarters EEAS building in Brussels on August 18, 2022. (John Thys/AFP)

MADRID — Iran requested “some adjustments” to a draft agreement on reviving a 2015 nuclear accord with major powers proposed by the European Union, the bloc’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell says.

During an interview with Spanish public television TVE, Borrell says “most” countries involved in nuclear talks with Iran agreed with the proposal, but that the United States had not yet responded.

The 2015 agreement between Iran and six world powers — Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States — gave the Islamic Republic sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program.

The deal was designed to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon — something it has always denied wanting to do.

But in 2018, then US president Donald Trump, a strong critic of the deal, unilaterally pulled out and slapped heavier sanctions on Iran.

Earlier this month, after more than a year of talks coordinated by Borrell and his team, the EU submitted what it called a “final” proposed text — which has not been made public — to revive the accord.

“Iran responded by saying ‘yes but,’ that is to say they want some adjustments,” Borrell tells TVE, without providing further details.

During a press conference yesterday in Santander in northern Spain, he said Iran’s response had seemed “reasonable” to him and it was therefore submitted to the six world powers involved in the nuclear talks.