Following Friday’s breakthrough in talks over reviving Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, President Hassan Rouhani said his government was determined to see United States sanctions removed by the time he leaves office in August.

"Combating Covid-19, lifting of [United States] sanctions, completion of economic projects, and the matter of people's subsistence are the four major areas the government will concentrate on in the next four months," Rouhani said at a meeting of the National Coronavirus Combat Taskforce on Saturday.

The nuclear deal – or JCPOA, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – was undermined in 2018 when President Donald Trump withdrew the US and imposed ‘maximum pressure’ on Iran, a range of stringent sanctions that led Tehran in turn to expand its nuclear program beyond JCPOA limits.

In an interview with PBS News on Friday, the US Special Envoy on Iran Robert Malley highlighted the US awareness that all sanctions inconsistent with the 2015 nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) would be lifted to bring Iran back to compliance. This appears to signal acceptance in the Biden administration, which is committed to reviving the JCPOA, that these sanctions should not be maintained as a means to coerce Iran into wider concessions. 

“We will have to go through that painstaking work of looking at those sanctions and seeing what we have to do so that Iran enjoys the benefits that it was supposed to enjoy under the deal,” Malley said. “We'd have to remove those sanctions that are inconsistent with the deal, if Iran is prepared to retract those steps and reverse the steps that it is taking in violation of its nuclear commitments.”

In a virtual meeting in Vienna on Friday, representatives of Iran and the other remaining JCPOA members – China, France Germany, France, Russia, and the UK – agreed to reconvene in Vienna next Tuesday for in-person talks to discuss steps required by the US and Iran to revive the JCPOA. Among other issues, these will consider which US sanctions are incompatible with the deal.

"We are several steps ahead now," Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran's top nuclear official, said on Saturday [April 3]. "The unjustifiable argument of who goes first [in reviving the JCPOA], us or them, and [the fact] that we are past that stage is promising."

Salehi said it would take Iran two or three months to reverse all steps in the nuclear program beyond JCPOA limits: enrichment to 20% could end immediately and plans to install new centrifuges dropped, with the dismantling of already installed machines taking longer. Salehi said Iran had around 50kg of 20% enriched uranium. He underlined that talks over sequencing would be limited to the JCPOA, and not include issues like missile defense or Iran’s regional alliances, as has been demanded by critics of the JCPOA in Washington, Israel and the Gulf: it appears the JCPOA signatories have agreed on this.

Describing developments as positive, the European Union External Action Deputy Secretary General Enrique Mora, who chaired the virtual talks, wrote in a tweet on Friday that "substantial work" was needed to bring the JCPOA back to life.

According to an EU press release, deputy foreign ministers and political directors of China, France, Germany, Russia, the UK and Iran in the Friday meeting all emphasised their commitment to preserve the JCPOA, discussed modalities to ensure the return to its full and effective implementation, and agreed to hold further meetings next week, including those of relevant expert groups. "In this context, the coordinator will also intensify separate contacts in Vienna with all JCPOA participants and the United States," the EU press release said.

Given it left the JCPOA in 2018, the US will not be directly present in the talks. In a tweet on Friday Zarif reiterated Iran’s long-held view that bilateral Iran-US meetings were not needed to co-ordinate "nuclear measures for choreographed removal of all sanctions."

"We have no time to waste," German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said on Friday. "A treaty that is fully respected once again would be a plus for security throughout the region." His Russian counterpart Mikhail Ulyanov said the way ahead would require intensive efforts although things appear to be "on the right track."