🇷🇺 Interview by Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the International Organizations in Vienna Mikhail Ulyanov to «Tehran Times» newspaper ❓What is the current status of the JCPOA negotiations? 💬 The JCPOA negotiations stopped in 2022, just the moment when they were on the finish line. All that was left was to agree on just a handful of provisions. The Western countries, namely the US, Germany, France and the UK, decided to abandon the process of finalization of the «package» decision, while Russia, Iran and China were ready to do it 💬 As far as we understand, recently there has been a resumption of informal contacts between representatives of Iran with political directors of foreign services of Germany, France and the UK, as well as with representatives of the European External Action Service, that used to play the role of the JCPOA negotiations’ coordinators. We see that these contacts are preliminary in nature, an informal dialogue that is far from real negotiations. Moreover, it is clear that the European countries are not and cannot be a key player in this field. However, the mere fact that the conversation has been resumed, can be assessed positively ❓Could you specify Russia’s role in facilitating a successful outcome? 💬 Russia played a considerable role during the 2021-2022 negotiations on the restoration of the JCPOA. We genuinely made a maximum effort to achieve an outcome. Answering your question, I think I can say that at that time all the participants of the process - Iran, China, E3, US as well as the EU - assessed Russia’s contribution very positively. Indeed, on many occasions we were able to propose certain compromise solutions that found unanimous support and allowed to move forward ❓What are the key challenges remaining in reviving the agreement? 💬 I believe that the key challenge in that regard is the lack of readiness of the Western countries to resume negotiations at this stage. In many ways the Western countries became hostages of their own political agenda. They were not able to appropriately take into account legitimate suggestions and requests of the Iranian side. They keep resorting to unreasonable politicization of the issue and regularly undertake not just provocative, but completely irrelevant actions against Iran. A clear example of that would be these countries’ behavior at the IAEA Board of Governors in Vienna with politically inadequate antiiranian resolutions ❓Could you outline the implications of the JCPOA for regional security and stability? 💬 In my view, the JCPOA had positive implications for regional security and stability in the period of 2015-2018 - before the unilateral withdrawal of the United States in 2018. Timely resumption of the JCPOA in full could have undoubtedly become one of the factors contributing to restoring stability in the region ❓Are there any potential avenues for future cooperation on the issue? 💬 As of today, nobody has an answer to this question. It is yet unclear what would be the position of the United States, whether it would acknowledge that its withdrawal from the JCPOA and imposition of the ‘maximum pressure’ campaign led to the outcomes directly opposite to what the United States had been counting for. It remains to be seen whether White House is willing to look for a political solution and reasonable balance of interests, without which it would be impossible to expect a positive result. One can probably expect that the situation will become clearer in 2-3 months. However, what has to be taken into account while addressing this issue, is that October 18, 2025 marks the expiration of the JCPOA and the UN Security Council Resolution 2231 timelines