Iran has said it will decide in the next few weeks whether to pull out of the nuclear deal signed in 2015 and start enriching uranium capable of making a nuclear bomb.
The announcement was made by Tehran as its officials met counterparts from France, Britain, Germany Russian and China in Vienna on Friday to assess how the deal can be kept alive in the face of the reimposition by the US of secondary sanctions designed to cripple any European firm continuing to do business with Iran.
President Trump withdrew from the deal despite strenuous European objections on 8 May, adding that old sanctions against contact with the Tehran regime would be reimposed.
In the run-up to the Vienna meeting, Tehran officials said the EU would need to present a credible compensation package by the end of the month to make up for the loss of income to Iran caused by the US sanctions.
Afterwards, Iran’s deputy foreign minister Abbas Araqchi said he was more confident than before that the deal could survive. “For the time being we are negotiating… to see if they can provide us with a package which can actually give Iran the benefits of sanctions-lifting and then the next step is to find guarantees for that package and we need both legal and political commitments by the remaining participants in the JCPOA [deal],” he said.
