Iran, world powers resume nuclear talks amid strains over enrichment

Iran and global powers resumed talks on Thursday to rescue the 2015 nuclear deal in an effort potentially complicated by Tehran’s decision to ramp up uranium enrichment and what it called Israeli sabotage at a nuclear site.

Casting a shadow over the Vienna talks, Tehran on Tuesday announced its decision to enrich uranium at 60% purity, a big step closer to the 90% that is weapons-grade material, in response to an explosion at its key Natanz facility on Sunday.

Calling the move “provocative”, the United States and the European parties to the deal warned that Tehran’s enrichment move was contrary to efforts to revive the accord abandoned by Washington three years ago.

The 2015 agreement sought to make it harder for Iran to develop an atomic bomb in return for lifting sanctions.

Tehran’s refusal to hold direct talks with the United States forced European intermediaries to shuttle between separate hotels in Vienna last week when Iran and the other signatories – Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia – held what they described as a first round of “constructive” negotiations.

Senior diplomats, excluding the United States, initially met to set the tone on Thursday in what diplomats anticipated would be a tougher round of talks to salvage the pact.

Two expert-level groups, seeking to marry lists of sanctions that the United States could lift with nuclear obligations Iran should meet, have now resumed their discussions.

“Currently I think the nuclear working group is more advanced, much more advanced, than (the) sanctions-lifting working group,” Wang Qun, China’s ambassador to the U.N. atomic watchdog, told reporters after the Joint Commission meeting of senior officials.

“So currently we should do away with all disruptive factors, moving forward as swiftly as we can on the work of negotiation, especially by zeroing in on sanctions-lifting.”

Iran’s foreign ministry said its negotiators had defended their decisions and expressed their disappointment at “the weak reaction” from European powers to the attack on Natanz.