VIENNA: Efforts to bring the United States back into the 2015 deal on Iran’s nuclear program stepped up a gear Tuesday as Iran and the five world powers still in the accord were meeting in Vienna while the US is due to start indirect talks with Tehran.
Friday’s announcement that Washington and Tehran would begin indirect talks through intermediaries was one of the first signs of tangible progress in efforts to return both nations to the terms of the accord, which restricted Iran’s nuclear program in return for relief from US and international sanctions.
Then-President Donald Trump pulled the US unilaterally out of the accord in 2018, opting for what he called a maximum pressure campaign of stepped-up US sanctions.
Since then, Iran has been steadily violating the restrictions in the deal, like the amount of enriched uranium that it can stockpile and the purity to which it can enrich it. Tehran’s moves have been calculated to pressure the other nations in the deal — Russia, China, France, Germany and Britain — to do more to offset crippling US sanctions reimposed under Trump.
President Joe Biden came into office saying that getting back into the accord and returning Iran’s nuclear program to international restrictions was a priority. But Iran and the United States have disagreed over Iran’s demands that sanctions be lifted first.
Senior foreign ministry officials from the countries still in the accord, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, were holding a European Union-chaired meeting Tuesday in Vienna.
Also due in the Austrian capital is a US delegation headed by the administration’s special envoy for Iran, Rob Malley. State Department spokesman Ned Price said talks will be structured around working groups that the Europeans will form with the other parties to the accord.
Price said Monday the talks are a “healthy step forward” but added that “we don’t anticipate an early or immediate breakthrough, as these discussions, we fully expect, will be difficult.”
“We don’t anticipate at present that there will be direct talks with Iran,” he said. “Though of course we remain open to them. And so we’ll have to see how things go.”
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif wrote Friday on Twitter: “No Iran-US meeting. Unnecessary.”
A statement issued after parties to the accord met virtually on Friday said the aim of their meeting Tuesday is to “clearly identify sanctions lifting and nuclear implementation measures, including through convening meetings of the relevant expert groups.”
In Tehran, government spokesman Ali Rabiei said Tuesday that Iran’s aim remained “lifting all sanctions that were imposed or reimposed against Iran” after the US quit the deal. He said Iran is “ready to return to our all commitments immediately after the American side lifts sanctions in a complete and verifiable” way.
However, Iran has continued to push beyond the limits set by the deal. Behrouz Kamalvandi, a spokesman for Iran’s civilian nuclear program, said officials had begun mechanical testing of an IR-9 prototype centrifuge. That centrifuge would enrich uranium 50 times faster than the IR-1s allowed under the accord, he said, according to the semi-official ISNA news agency.
Separately, Iran’s foreign ministry claimed that a man associated with Iranian exile groups insulted and tried to attack the deputy foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, after he left a meeting Tuesday morning with an EU diplomat. Vienna police said there was a protest outside a hotel but they weren’t immediately aware of any “relevant incidents or physical confrontations.”
Ahead of Tuesday’s talks, an Iranian prosecutor said 10 officials have been indicted for last year’s shooting down of a Ukrainian passenger plane by Iran’s military in which 176 people died. Iran faced withering international criticism last month for releasing a final report that blamed human error but named no one responsible.
US, Iran expected to begin indirect nuclear talks in Vienna
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US, Iran expected to begin indirect nuclear talks in Vienna
Venezuelans await political prisoners’ release after government vow
- Rights groups estimate there are 800 to 1,200 political prisoners held in Venezuela
CARACAS: Venezuelans waited Sunday for more political prisoners to be freed as ousted president Nicolas Maduro defiantly claimed from his US jail cell that he was “doing well” after being seized by US forces a week ago.
The government of interim president Delcy Rodriguez on Thursday began to release prisoners jailed under Maduro in a gesture of openness, after pledging to cooperate with Washington over its demands for Venezuelan oil.
The government said a “large” number would be released — but rights groups and the opposition say only about 20 have walked free since, including several prominent opposition figures.
Rights groups estimate there are 800 to 1,200 political prisoners held in Venezuela.
Rodriguez, vice president under Maduro, said Venezuela would take “the diplomatic route” with Washington, after Trump claimed the United States was “in charge” of the South American country.
“Venezuela has started the process, in a BIG WAY, of releasing their political prisoners. Thank you!” Trump said in a post late Saturday on his Truth Social platform.
“I hope those prisoners will remember how lucky they got that the USA came along and did what had to be done.”
Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores were captured in a dramatic January 3 raid and taken to New York to stand trial on drug-trafficking and weapons charges, to which they pleaded not guilty.
Anxiety over prisoners
A detained police officer accused of “treason” against Venezuela died in state custody after a stroke and heart attack, the state prosecution service confirmed on Sunday.
Opposition groups said the man, Edison Jose Torres Fernandez, 52, had shared messages critical of Maduro’s government.
“We directly hold the regime of Delcy Rodriguez responsible for this death,” Justice First, part of the Venezuelan opposition alliance, said on X.
Families on Saturday night held candlelight vigils outside El Rodeo prison east of Caracas and El Helicoide, a notorious jail run by the intelligence services, holding signs with the names of their imprisoned relatives.
Prisoners include Freddy Superlano, a close ally of opposition figurehead Maria Corina Machado. He was jailed after challenging Maduro’s widely contested re-election in 2024.
“He is alive — that was what I was most afraid about,” Superlano’s wife Aurora Silva told reporters.
“He is standing strong and I am sure he is going to come out soon.”
Maduro meanwhile claimed he was “doing well” in jail in New York, his son Nicolas Maduro Guerra said in a video released Saturday by his party.
The ex-leader’s supporters rallied in Caracas on Saturday but the demonstrations were far smaller than Maduro’s camp had mustered in the past, and top figures from his government were notably absent.
The caretaker president has moved to placate the powerful pro-Maduro base by insisting Venezuela is not “subordinate” to Washington.
Pressure on Cuba
Vowing to secure US access to Venezuela’s vast crude reserves, Trump pressed top oil executives at a White House meeting on Friday to invest in Venezuela, but was met with a cautious reception.
Experts say Venezuela’s oil infrastructure is creaky after years of mismanagement and sanctions.
Washington has also confirmed that US envoys visited Caracas on Friday to discuss reopening their embassy there.
Trump on Sunday pressured Caracas’s leftist ally Cuba, which has survived in recent years under a US embargo thanks to cheap Venezuelan oil imports.
He urged Cuba to “make a deal” or face unspecified consequences, warning that the flow of Venezuelan oil and money to Havana would stop now that Maduro was gone.
Cuba’s President Miguel Diaz-Canel retorted on X that the Caribbean island was “ready to defend the homeland to the last drop of blood.”
“No one tells us what to do.”
Venezuela’s government in a statement called for “political and diplomatic dialogue” between Washington and Havana.
“International relations should be governed by the principals of international law — non-interference, sovereign equality of states and the right of peoples to govern themselves.”
