Iran, EU Nations Trade Complaints Over Nuclear Deal During Vienna Talks

Dispute Resolution not triggered as negotiations continue

A meeting among all of the remaining parties of the P5+1 nuclear deal with Iran was held Friday in Vienna. The three hour talk focused on some very long-standing disputes about how the deal will be able to survive with the withdrawal of the United States.

The EU nations warned heavily about Iran’s use of deliberate but reversible violations to try to trigger the talks, with Iran pushing for those nations to ensure that Iran gets the sanction relief it was promised under the deal, and which the US has subsequently blocked.

Chinese officials say the talks ended without any concrete deal, urging Iran to return to full compliance to avoid complications, but that no sanctions relief was agreed upon, and the dispute resolution mechanism was not triggered.

The dispute resolution was presented as a threat to impose snap-back sanctions against Iran and essentially blow up the nuclear deal entirely. Russia and China both appear to oppose that idea, while the US has been pushing the EU parties to blow up the deal. For now, nothing was agreed upon, and talks are likely to continue.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.