Iran Chief Negotiator leaves Vienna
Iran’s chief negotiator at the nuclear talks in Vienna returned home Monday night, prompting European officials to say negotiations were at a standstill.
Iranian officials said Ali Bagheri-Kani, who leads the Iranian negotiating team, would soon return to Vienna. Two Western diplomats said it wasn’t clear why Mr. Bagheri-Kani left or when he would return.
According to Wall Street Journal, his departure comes after Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Iranian counterpart discussed Moscow’s weekend demand that Washington provide it with written guarantees that Western sanctions on Ukraine wouldn’t harm future Russian-Iranian trade.
Mr. Bagheri-Kani’s sudden departure raises the prospect that the Vienna negotiations on reviving the 2015 nuclear deal, which have dragged on for 11 months, could fail. The 2015 agreement lifted most international sanctions on Tehran in exchange for tight but temporary limits on Iran’s nuclear program.
“It is time, in the next few days, for political decisions to end the ViennaTalks,” Enrique Mora, the European Union official who chairs the talks, said on Twitter.
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