In a Wednesday tweet, she touched upon the start of a session on JCPOA, noting, “11th meeting of the Joint Commission of the JCPOA in Vienna starting now with E3+2 and Iran and chaired by EU.”
She went on to say that this is the “First [meeting] since the adoption of the Special Purpose Vehicle/INSTEX.”
“Commitment to implementation of JCPOA reiterated by E3+2 and Iran,” Schmid highlighted, also posting a photo of the meeting.
Iranian and other countries’ delegations have started expert meetings from Monday. The Wednesday session will be focused on ways to get around US unilateral sanctions against Iran, as well as solutions to implement remaining parties' commitments.
IAEA has always endorsed Iran’s adherence to its commitments after the inking of JCPOA in 2015, however, Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the deal and re-imposed harsh sanctions against the Iranian nation in May 2018.
Other signatories of the deal have vowed to keep it alive. After months of delay, European signatories, i.e. Germany, UK, and France established a financial mechanism dubbed as INSTEX (Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges) to facilitate trade ties with Iran and ditch US sanctions; however, the channel is yet to prove its true effectiveness. Meanwhile, Iran has called for the adoption of more practical measures by JCPOA signatories to safeguard Tehran’s interest.
MAH/PR