Negotiations between the United States and Iran on a return to the 2015 nuclear deal would progress faster if the two sides could meet face to face, according to a senior State Department official after three days of indirect talks in Vienna.
Delegates described a constructive, businesslike atmosphere but said there was little immediate progress on issues that must be resolved for Washington, which left the deal under former President Donald Trump in 2018, and Tehran to return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
Talks are due to resume next week.
But the official said they were headed for an impasse if Iran continued to insist that all sanctions imposed since 2017 must be lifted.
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Negotiations, he said, would be “infinitely easier” if they could be conducted around a single table.
“We think it would be better if we could sit down with the Iranians, but we’re not going to pay a price for that,” he said. “If they don’t want to meet with us, too bad. It’s just going to be much harder for them to get what they say they want, which is a mutual return to compliance.”
He said the U.S. could not force the Iranians to meet face to face with the American delegation. “We’ll have to make do,” he added.
That meant third parties shuttling back and forth between the other signatories to the deal and the U.S.
Washington was the first to withdraw from the deal, a deal which limited its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief, under Trump’s direction. He reimposed sanctions and introduced new ones.
Iran then breached some of the terms of the deal, including limits on the production of enriched uranium.
Now, Iran is insisting all Trump-era sanctions are lifted, while American officials say they are prepared to suspend “sanctions that are inconsistent with the JCPOA.”
The official said talks were at a very early stage.
“This is just the first step of this first phase of a potential return to the [deal],” he said.
Earlier, the European Union described the talks as “constructive.”
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“The Joint Commission was briefed on the work of the two expert groups on sanctions lifting and nuclear implementation measures and participants noted the constructive and results oriented exchanges,” it said in a statement.
