Borrell advocates keeping lines of communication with Iran open “whatever the issue”

September 24 () –

The High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, has advocated this Monday for keeping the lines of communication with Iran open “whatever the issue” and in the face of escalating tensions in the Middle East, statements made after the Iranian government has shown its willingness to address its nuclear program.

Borrell has confirmed that he will meet with his Iranian counterpart, Abbas Araqchi, as he has done on previous occasions, and has indicated that they will talk about “everything and, in particular, the nuclear agreement.” “We have to keep the lines of communication open with Iran whatever the issue on which we disagree,” he said at a press conference in New York, where the 79th session of the UN General Assembly is being held this week.

Iranian President Masud Pezeshkian has met with European Council President Charles Michel, to whom he told that “interaction requires the language of force and threats,” clarifying that “distance and lack of interaction create mentalities that become the basis for misunderstandings and intensified disputes.”

Iran’s top diplomat said on Tuesday that he was willing to discuss its nuclear programme on the margins of the General Assembly “if the other parties are ready,” after years of stalemate in negotiations following the United States’ unilateral withdrawal in 2018 from the historic agreement reached three years earlier.

Araqchi, in fact, met during the day with the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, who said that it was an “important meeting and reestablishment of contact” with the Foreign Minister in view of his upcoming visit to Tehran, as the latter pointed out through a publication on his profile on the social network X which he accompanied with an image of the meeting.

The trip, for which there is still no official date confirmed, will mark the first dialogue between the IAEA and Tehran since the election of the new Iranian president, Masud Pezeshkian. The breakdown of the nuclear agreement signed in 2015 with international powers has led in recent years to a practically constant increase in the figures for uranium enriched to 60 percent, a material that, at maximum purity levels (90 percent), can be used to manufacture atomic weapons.