EU Says Sanctions Against Iran Imposed Last Week Unrelated to JCPOA Talks - Spokesman

MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 24th October, 2022) The sanctions imposed on Iran by the European Union last week over the suppression of mass protests in the country are not connected to the talks on the restoration of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), EU foreign affairs spokesman Peter Stano said on Monday.

On October 17, the EU imposed sanctions on 11 Iranian individuals and four entities, including Iran's morality police, due to the violent crackdown on mass protests in the country over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody in September. Tehran warned the bloc that the new sanctions would have a detrimental effect on bilateral relations.

"These sanctions, introduced last week, and the talks about bringing the JCPOA back on track are two separate and not related issues, not related directly," Stano said at a press briefing.

The talks about bringing the JCPOA back are still continuing, the spokesman added. There is not much time left, but EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has been "trying to see if there is willingness to reach the necessary compromise on the final text," Stano stated.

In 2015, Iran signed a nuclear deal, known officially as the JCPOA, with the P5+1 group, which includes the United States, China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, Germany and the European Union. It required Tehran to scale back its nuclear program and drastically reduce its uranium reserves in exchange for sanctions relief, including the lifting of an arms embargo five years after the deal was made.

In 2018, then-President of the US Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the JCPOA and reimposed sanctions on Iran, to which the latter responded with a gradual abandoning of its own commitments under the deal. Several packages of US sanctions against Iran have since been imposed.

Vienna has hosted several rounds of talks since April 2021, aimed at preventing the Iran nuclear deal from failing altogether. However, the negotiations eventually stalled due to the lack of trust between Tehran and Washington.