Saudi Arabia acknowledges that there has been no progress at the GCC+3 summit on Iran’s nuclear program

July 16 (EUROPA PRESS) –

The Saudi government has acknowledged that the summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council + 3 has ended without progress on the talks on the reincorporation of Iran as a full partner in the nuclear agreement signed in 2015 between the Islamic republic and the international community.

The Saudi Foreign Minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, explained that the meeting between the leaders of the Gulf, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt with the President of the United States, Joe Biden, has produced “positive talks” on the Iranian issue, although “Without concrete results”, as he made known at the final press conference at the end of the meeting, held in the city of Jeddah.

Instead, the minister has indicated that the meeting’s primary objective was to assess the current state of relations between the United States and the Gulf countries during Biden’s first visit to the region as US president.

Iran has announced the withdrawal of its commitments on several of the points of the 2015 nuclear agreement after the United States unilaterally left the pact in 2018, although the Iranian authorities have defended that these steps can be reversed if the United States withdraws the sanctions and returns to the agreement.

The only public mention of Iran to date has been the one that Biden has introduced during his introductory speech, in which he has assured his country that it will continue to face “the threat that Iran represents, and has guaranteed that his country “will not only pursue the deterrence of threats, but also de-escalation of conflicts where necessary”, as has happened thanks to the ceasefire in Yemen.

“We are very interested”, he added, “that it does not obtain a nuclear weapon”, before indicating that it will also focus on preventing Tehran “undermining the freedom of navigation through water channels such as Bab el Mandeb or the Strait of Hormuz”, key routes in the transit of crude oil and other goods.