Iran has initially rejected the EU proposal for an informal meeting to revive the 2015 nuclear deal. “In view of the recent positions and actions of the USA” and the three European countries that are participating in the agreement, Germany, France and Great Britain, the government “does not consider the time to be a suitable time to hold the informal meeting proposed by the European coordinator,” said the Foreign Ministry in Tehran on Sunday.
Image: APA (AFP)
The five UN veto powers and Germany concluded the nuclear deal with Iran in June 2015 after years of negotiations in Vienna. It is supposed to prevent the Islamic Republic from building nuclear weapons.
Former US President Donald Trump rejected the agreement negotiated under his predecessor Barack Obama as completely inadequate and terminated it in 2018. Then Trump imposed a series of sanctions against Iran, from which the country's economy suffers massively. Tehran, for its part, has since gradually withdrawn from its obligations under the agreement.
The new US President Joe Biden has agreed to return to the nuclear deal. However, Washington and Tehran are arguing over who should take the first step to revitalize the deal.
On Friday night, on Biden's instructions, the US army carried out air strikes against pro-Iranian militias in Syria. The deployment was preceded by several rocket attacks on US bases in Iraq, for which the US blamed a pro-Iranian militia.
