Iran is’serious’ about reviving the nuclear agreement

The Omani offer to save the 2015 agreement is still on the table, according to the foreign ministry, and Tehran is in contact with the US about it.

If the other parties, including the US, reciprocate, Iran is prepared to discuss returning to full compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal, according to the foreign ministry of the Islamic Republic. After Washington withdrew in 2018, the agreement’s signatories have been attempting to resurrect it.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian reportedly told UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Sunday that Tehran continues to communicate with the US and that the Oman-proposed option to save the deal “is still on the table.”

We are serious about going back to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA),” the minister stated, “if the other parties are ready.”

He continued by saying that Tehran and Guterres had constructive discussions regarding the JCPOA, particularly in regards to the exchange of prisoners between Iran and the US and the unfreezing of the Middle Eastern nation’s frozen assets in South Korea.

The JCPOA, which Iran, the US, the UK, France, Germany, Russia, China, and the EU signed in 2015, placed some limitations on Tehran’s nuclear industry in exchange for the relaxation of economic sanctions. However, in 2018, after claiming that the pact was fundamentally flawed, then-US President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew Washington from it, putting the treaty in jeopardy.

In 2021, when US President Joe Biden made it clear that Washington would prefer to resume compliance, the parties began negotiations to resurrect the agreement. Despite initial success, the protracted negotiations came to a standstill as Iran demanded assurances that the US wouldn’t pull out of the agreement once more. Washington, however, charged that Tehran was not engaging in genuine negotiations.

Despite these difficulties, Iran confirmed this summer that it had undertaken covert negotiations on the nuclear deal with the US in Oman, where the Arab nation had presented its plans aimed at fostering stronger ties between the two countries.

Iran agreed to free five American citizens earlier this week in exchange for the US freeing an equivalent number of Iranians. The agreement also allowed for the release of $6 billion in Iranian oil earnings that had been frozen in South Korea and had subsequently been transferred to Tehranian banks.