Iran, Russia foreign ministers discuss 2015 JCPOA deal on telephone

Moscow: The foreign ministers of Russia and Iran Sergei Lavrov and Hossein Amir Abdollahian have talked on the telephone regarding the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran's nuclear agreement, IANS reported.

The discussion went on as a spinoff of the eighth round resurrected nuclear deals talks commenced in Vienna on December 27, 2021. Also, both ministers further discussed matters of bilateral ties and regional issues.

The talks on JCPOA resumed once again after it came to a halt early last year when Iran elected a new hardline. Seven rounds of talks have been held since April last year to revive the broken 2015 nuclear pact, which has Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia as major parties. The United States stood as a distant participant in the talks.

After the eight-round talks resumed in January, the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov commented that the parties have gained momentum and said that all of them had expressed their willingness in finding solutions for the remaining issues.

The 2015 pact had eased sanctions on Iran, and in return, the Islamic republic should suppress their nuclear plans and limit the stock of its radioactive fuels to a specific quantity mandated by the deal. But in 2018, the Trump administration reinstated sanctions on Iran, crippling its economy, dissolving the agreement and Iran restarted accumulating nuclear fuel to levels forbidden by the deal. But Israel stood against the deal even from the beginning, and it had recently gone public that it is not bound to no agreements and will maintain complete freedom of action anywhere needed.