Blinken says U.S. consulting with Israel over Iran nuclear talks

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken promised on Tuesday continued close consultation with Israel about any potential U.S. return to a nuclear deal between Iran and world powers.

After talks with Blinken in Jerusalem, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he hoped Washington would not sign back on to the deal, and that “whatever happens, Israel will always retain the right to defend itself” against any Iranian nuclear threat.

Indirect talks between Washington and Tehran, which denies its nuclear program is aimed at producing weapons, have been under way in Vienna.

Blinken, on a Middle East mission to try to shore up last week’s ceasefire between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers, said the United States would continue to strengthen its “long-standing partnership” with Israel.

That, he told reporters, with Netanyahu at his side, “includes consulting closely with Israel as we did today on the ongoing negotiations in Vienna around a potential return to the Iran nuclear agreement”.

To Israeli acclaim, U.S. President Joe Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, withdrew the United States from the 2015 nuclear deal, deeming it too advantageous for Tehran, and reimposed U.S. sanctions.

The Biden administration has since sought to assuage Israel which sees a nuclear-armed Iran as an existential threat.

On Sunday, Blinken said the United States has not seen yet whether Iran will move to comply with its nuclear commitments in order to have sanctions removed even as the talks have shown progress.

Israeli teams have held discussions in Washington with U.S. counterparts over the potential revival of the deal.

“I hope that the United States will not go back to the old JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) because we believe that deal paves the way for Iran to have an arsenal of nuclear weapons with international legitimacy,” Netanyahu said.

(Reporting by Maayan Lubell; Editing by Jeffrey Heller, William Maclean)

Parties to Iran nuclear talks to speed up efforts for Iranian, U.S. compliance

VIENNA (Reuters) -The parties negotiating a revival of the Iran nuclear deal agreed on Tuesday to speed up efforts to bring the United States and Iran back into compliance, diplomats said.

Iran, Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia began a third round of meetings in Vienna on Tuesday to agree yo steps that would be needed if the 2015 agreement is to be revived.

The main differences are over what sanctions the United States will need to remove, what steps Iran will need to take to resume its obligations to curb its nuclear program, and how to sequence this process to satisfy both sides.

“The discussions proved that participants are guided by the unity of purpose which is full restoration of the nuclear deal in its original form,” Mikhail Ulyanov, Moscow’s ambassador to the U.N. atomic watchdog, said on Twitter after senior diplomats met in the Austrian capital.

“It was decided to expedite the process.”

A U.S. delegation is in a separate location in Vienna, enabling representatives of the five powers to shuttle between both sides because Iran has rejected direct talks.

Three expert working groups have been tasked with unravelling the most important issues and drafting solutions.

At the end of talks last week, the United States and its European allies said serious differences still persisted despite making some progress in their latest indirect talks.

“We hope all parties will sustain the momentum we have already reached in their efforts towards an earliest resolution of this issue before us,” Wang Qun, China’s envoy to the U.N. watchdog, told reporters, adding that senior diplomats would reconvene on Wednesday to take stock.

(Reporting by Francois Murphy; Writing by John Irish; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne and Timothy Heritage)