MOSCOW, February 5 Head of European diplomacy Josep Borrell said, that Iran's position on some issues makes it difficult to reach an agreement on a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on Iran's nuclear program.
“Despite the fact that everything went well, (the United States) withdrew from the agreement … Subsequently, Iran took a position that makes it very difficult to reach agreements of any kind. The suppression of internal movements, especially women's, the use of the death penalty, the supply of weapons to Russia — although they deny they are doing it, but there is quite a lot of evidence of this — they created conditions in which the nuclear agreement becomes more difficult,» Borrell said in an interview with the Spanish newspaper Pais.
The head of European diplomacy noted that now the joint comprehensive action plan is frozen. «I should try to keep it,» he added.
Western countries claim that Iran is allegedly currently supplying drones to Russia for military operations in Ukraine. Moscow and Tehran have repeatedly denied such accusations. Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian said that Tehran supplied the Russian Federation with drones, but a few months before the start of a special operation in Ukraine. Iran also expanded its sanctions against the European Union in response. The Iranian Foreign Minister called the information about the supply of missiles to Russia «completely false.» The Kremlin also noted that they did not have data on Iranian weapons — the press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov reported that «Russian equipment is used, with Russian names.»
In 2015, the United Kingdom, Germany, China, Russia, the United States, France and Iran signed a nuclear deal — the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which involved the lifting of sanctions in exchange for limiting Iran's nuclear program. In May 2018, the United States under Donald Trump withdrew from the JCPOA and reinstated sanctions against Tehran. In response, Iran announced a phased reduction in its obligations under the agreement, waiving restrictions on nuclear research, centrifuges and the level of uranium enrichment.
Negotiations on the renewal of the JCPOA and the lifting of Washington's sanctions against Tehran were held in Vienna. In December 2021, the parties reached an agreement on two draft agreements, in which the European side included the positions of Iran. Iranian spokesman Bagheri Kyani said the talks were going well, but US State Department spokesman Ned Price assessed the progress in Vienna as modest, urging Tehran to take the matter seriously.