Russia demands cloud Iran nuclear talks as Ukraine conflict enters picture
- Russia is seeking guarantees from the US before it backs a potential Iran nuclear deal with world powers
- Blinken says sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine have nothing to with any Iran deal
Talks to revive Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers are mired in uncertainty after Russia’s demands for a US guarantee that the sanctions it faces over the Ukraine conflict would not hurt its trade with Tehran.
Moscow threw the potential spanner in the works on Saturday, just as months of indirect talks between Tehran and Washington in Vienna appeared to be headed for an agreement, with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov saying the Western sanctions over Ukraine had become a stumbling block for the nuclear deal.
On Monday Iran gave a muted reaction to Russia’s demands. “We are still waiting for further details [from Moscow],” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said.
He rejected the notion that Russia was endangering an agreement in the final stage of the negotiations, saying “Russia’s position in the negotiations has always been constructive,” Iranian news agency ISNA reported.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken sought to dispel talk of obstacles on Sunday when he said the sanctions imposed on Russia over Ukraine had nothing to do with a potential nuclear deal with Iran.
“These things are totally different and just are not, in any way, linked together. So I think that’s irrelevant,” Blinken said in an interview with CBS’s Face the Nation show. He added that a potential deal with Iran was close, but cautioned that a couple of very challenging remaining issues were unresolved.
Yet a senior Iranian official told Reuters earlier that Tehran was waiting for clarification from Moscow about the comments from Lavrov, who said Russia wanted a written US guarantee that Russia’s trade, investment and military-technical cooperation with Iran would not be hindered in any way by the sanctions.
