Russia discussed Iran nuclear agreement with US, maintains contact with Europeans: Moscow

The minister was asked if Russia and the United States are currently discussing Iran.

“We discussed the situation in the Persian Gulf. We discussed the joint comprehensive action program on the Iran nuclear issue. We are in favor of restoring the original program from which the Americans dropped during the first Trump government. There are some contacts on the European side,” he shared.

Russia “would be in favor of resuming the format which developed the original deal endorsed by the Security Council (which is France, Germany, UK, US, Russia, China) and Iran,” Lavrov explained.

“We’ll see how it goes,” he added.

The five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany struck a nuclear deal with Iran in 2015 to address the crisis over its nuclear program. Donald Trump who held his first tenure as the US president withdrew from the agreement in 2018.

Iran and three European countries have been holding talks on and off since 2021, three years after the United States left the 2015 nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and reinstated harsh sanctions against Iran.

The trio failed to live up to their promise of bringing Washington back to the agreement.

Tehran started to scale down its commitments under the JCPOA in a series of pre-announced and clear steps after witnessing the other parties’ failure to secure its interests under the agreement.