President Joe Biden and three of his European allies held a meeting on Saturday to discuss how they will move forward on their approach with Iran, having to decide whether to apply new sanctions as Tehran continues enriching uranium or let the negotiations proceed, the CNN has said in a report.
The meeting on Iran was held on the margins of the Group of 20 summit in Rome with United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel to sort out how to proceed. The meeting was convened at Merkel's request.
When a reporter asked whether Biden wanted stalled negotiations with Iran to restart, the President said, "They're scheduled to resume."
He didn't answer any other shouted questions, and the leaders retreated to their conference room after a few seconds.
The discussion comes one day after the US imposed new sanctions on Iran related to its drone program and less than a week after Tehran announced it would return to nuclear talks in Vienna.
CNN cited the White House officials as saying that there isn't one particular objective from the meeting. Instead, they said this is an attempt to sort out next steps and ensure all parties are on the same page.
Iran and the remaining signatories to the JCPOA known as the P4+1 have held six rounds of talks so far with no results. The Western powers made excessive demands during the talks and the talks were postponed at the end of the previous Iranian administration under Rouhani until the formation of the new government in Iran under President Ebrahim Raeisi.
The new Iranian administration has vowed that it will return to the Vienna talks if they are result-oriented and can yield tangible results for Iran in terms of the removal of the sanctions and abidance of the parties by the JCPOA provisions.
KI