Lavrov: The White House is sending signals that it is ready to improve the situation around the nuclear deal

31 March 2021

 

US President Joe Biden's administration is giving encouraging signals of willingness to improve the situation around the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on Iran's nuclear program (JCPOA). Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said this on Wednesday, speaking at a special session of the Middle East Conference of the Valdai international discussion club.

 

"There are now encouraging signals from the Biden administration in the direction of finding some kind of compromise in order to break the deadlock over the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and in parallel begin to address additional concerns," he said.

 


Lavrov noted that the Russian side actively supports the development of dialogue on the return to the Iranian nuclear deal, the discussion of mutual claims. "We are proposing an inclusive process, when, unfortunately, the inertia left over from the last US administration is still strong: the inertia of viewing all problems in the region through an anti-Iranian prism," the Minister added.


The diplomat noted that Moscow is in favor of restoring the Iran nuclear deal without any modifications. "We are in favor of restoring the JCPOA as it was approved by the Security Council, without any modifications, and for the process of negotiating a system of security and cooperation in and around the Gulf region to begin in parallel," he said.

 

During this conversation, Lavrov said, the missile problem and how countries in the region position themselves in various crisis situations could also be discussed.

 

Roadmap

 

Lavrov said Russia also offered an informal roadmap for getting back on track with the deal.


"We have proposed an informal roadmap where consistently at the same time Iran and the US will step by step return to the fulfillment of their obligations," he said.


Lavrov noted that French colleagues are helping to formulate the content of these steps, especially the first step, which should launch the process of implementing the JCPOA in full.


"I will not go into details, but nevertheless this is a negotiation process that is now underway and it is better not to make specifics public," the Minister said.

 

 

GSV "Russia - Islamic World"

Photo: Creative Commons

Based on materials from TASS