Nuclear talks in Vienna
Nuclear talks in ViennaReuters

Iran is not ready to return to talks with world powers over its nuclear program yet and its new negotiating team wants to discuss the texts that will be put forward when it meets with the EU in Brussels in the next few weeks, a senior EU official said on Friday, according to Reuters.

EU political director Enrique Mora, the chief coordinator for the talks, was in Tehran on Thursday to meet members of Iran's nuclear negotiating team.

"They are not yet ready for engaging in Vienna," the official told reporters on condition of anonymity, adding that he believed Tehran was "absolutely decided to go back to Vienna and to end the negotiations."

Mora's trip to Tehran came with pressure mounting from EU countries as well as the United States for a swift resumption of talks on Washington's return to the agreement.

Iran has gradually scaled back its compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal it signed with world powers in response to former US President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the agreement in May of 2018.

The previous Iranian government, headed by former President Hassan Rouhani, had been holding indirect talks with the Biden administration on a return to the agreement.

The negotiations were adjourned on June 20, two days after Ebrahim Raisi won Iran's presidential election, and no date has been set for a resumption of dialogue.

After Mora's visit, Iran's foreign ministry said it would hold talks in the coming days with the EU in Brussels.

"They insisted that they don't want talks for talks, they want talking with practical results and with a final agreement on how to bring JCPOA (the nuclear deal) back to life," the official said, according to Reuters.

Describing a meeting in Brussels as a "good idea", the official said it would give both sides the opportunity to go through the texts on the table from June and clarify questions that Iran's new negotiating team may have.

Iran's Foreign Minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, last week said he expects negotiations on the 2015 Iran nuclear deal to restart in Vienna soon.

"We are now finalizing consultations on this matter and will soon restore our negotiations in Vienna," he told reporters in Moscow after talks with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov.

US State Department spokesman Ned Price later said in response, "We hope their definition of soon matches our definition of soon."

(Arutz Sheva’s North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Arutz Sheva articles, however, is Israeli time.)