Preliminary consultations of participants in a session of the JCPOA Joint Commission have started in Vienna, Russia’s Permanent Mission to the International Organizations in Vienna said in a tweet on Sunday.
“The Russian delegation is led by Deputy [Foreign Minister] Sergey Ryabkov”, it said.
A session of the Joint Commission at the level of political directors will be held in Vienna on Sunday. Prior to the previous meeting, the Russian side had held consultations with representatives from the European foreign policy service, China and Iran.
Under the program, preliminary bilateral and multilateral consultations will be followed by a coordination meeting of the participants in the deal without Iran (Russia, the UK, Germany, China and France), after which a session of the commission will begin. It is scheduled for noon local time (13:00 Moscow time). The talks are expected to end in the afternoon.
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was signed by Iran with the UN Security Council permanent members (Russia, the UK, China, the US, France) and Germany in 2015. The deal restricted Tehran’s nuclear development in exchange for lifting the UN sanctions and the unilateral restrictions imposed by the US and the EU. On May 8, 2018, US President Donald Trump announced Washington’s withdrawal from the JCPOA. Exactly a year after, President of Iran Hassan Rouhani announced that Iran was suspending a part of its nuclear deal obligations and gave other parties to the deal two months to fulfil their obligations.