Qatar welcomes hosting indirect Iran-US talks on JCPOA revival

In a statement issued on Tuesday, the Qatari Foreign Ministry said the Persian Gulf kingdom was fully ready to “provide the environment that will help all parties achieve successful results.”

Qatar hopes that the new round of negotiations will bring “positive results” that enable a revival of the Iran deal, officially named the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), “thereby strengthening security, stability and peace in the region and opening up new prospects for wider regional cooperation and dialogue with the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

The indirect negotiations will be held in Doha under the auspices of the European Union.

Iran’s lead negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani arrived in the Qatari capital on Tuesday. Robert Malley, the US special envoy for Iran, also headed to Qatar on Monday.

Since last April, several rounds of negotiations had been held in the Austrian capital, Vienna, on restoring the JCPOA, whose fate has been in doubt following Washington’s unilateral withdrawal in May 2018.

The talks, however, hit a stalemate a few months ago over what Iran calls Washington’s failure to take political decisions on a range of issues, mainly an effective removal of the sanctions it has imposed on the Islamic Republic and provision of guarantees that it won’t violate the multilateral agreement again.