Iranian foreign minister plans Moscow trip to save nuclear deal

Iran’s foreign minister will travel to Moscow Tuesday to try to address a last-minute hitch that threatens to upend delicate talks on reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

Iranian officials said Monday that Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian will meet with Russian officials after the Kremlin demanded new guarantees that U.S. and Western sanctions on Moscow imposed after its invasion of Ukraine would not affect Russia’s bilateral trade with Iran.

The Biden administration has rejected the linkage, which came just as the international coalition of countries — including both the U.S. and Russia — appeared on the verge of reviving the 2015 deal that President Trump repudiated in 2018.

France, Germany and Britain, all signatories to the deal, warned that the latest talks could collapse if the impasse over Russia’s demands was not broken.

Iranian officials have insisted they remain committed to the talks, being held in Vienna, and said they were confident Russia’s objections would not torpedo a deal.

Iran’s top security official, Ali Shamkhani, said on Twitter on March 14 that Tehran will stay in the talks until a “strong agreement that meets all our legal and logical demands” is reached.

But the hardline government in Tehran again on Monday put the failure to clinch a deal so far on Washington, appearing set to blame the U.S. if the delicate talks break down.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh told reporters on March 14 that Mr. Amir-Abdollahian will “go to Moscow on Tuesday,” according to a report by the U.S. government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

He said negotiators were “not at a point of announcing an agreement now since there are some important open issues that need to be decided upon by Washington.” He said as soon as those decisions are made, negotiators would “be able to return to Vienna and reach a final agreement.”

The outlines of the deal gave Iran sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program. The U.S. re-imposed punishing sanctions on Iran and its trading partners after Mr. Trump’s withdrawal, and Iran has responded by repeatedly exceeding the limits on its suspect nuclear programs set in the original 2015 deal.