Iran says nuke deal within reach if US ‘realistic’ in demands, as EU envoy visits Tehran

TEHRAN, Iran — A leading European Union diplomat is holding talks in Tehran, Iran’s state-run media reports, amid hopes that an agreement to restore Iran’s tattered nuclear deal with world powers can be completed.

The meetings between the EU’s envoy, Enrique Mora, and Iran’s top nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani 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.

The report on the talks in Tehran gives scant detail, saying only that the diplomats discussed the latest on the nuclear agreement, with Kani repeating that Iran believed a deal was within reach if America was “realistic” in its demands.

Former US president Donald Trump abandoned the nuclear deal in 2018 and re-imposed crushing sanctions. Iran gradually publicly breached the agreement with a massive expansion of its nuclear work.

Nuclear talks broke off earlier this month as last-minute wrangles in Vienna coincided with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and financial sanctions imposed by the West on Moscow.