Iran, EU3 Hold Nuclear Talks in Turkey

Deputy foreign ministers from Iran and the European members of the Group 5+1 (the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany) started a one-day round of talks on Tehran’s peaceful nuclear program in the Turkish city of Istanbul on Thursday.

The talks are part of regular meetings between Iran and the members of the Group 5+1 (alternatively known as the P5+1 or E3+3) which are negotiating to settle a decade-long standoff on Tehran’s nuclear case.
Two Iranian deputy foreign ministers, Abbas Araqchi and Majid Takht Ravanchi, have attended the Istanbul talks along with Foreign Ministry’s Director General for the Political and International Affairs Hamid Baeidinejad, Foreign Minister’s Legal Adviser Davoud Mohammadnia, Mohammad Amiri, the director general for the safeguards affairs at the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), and Pejman Rahimian, Chief of Staff at the AEOI.
In the ongoing talks, Germany is represented by Hans-Dieter Lucas, Britain by Simon Gass, and France by Nicolas de Rivière.
Iran and the Group 5+1 (Russia, China, the US, Britain, France and Germany) are in talks to hammer out a final agreement to end more than a decade of impasse over Tehran’s nuclear energy program.
In November 2013, they signed an interim deal –the Joint Plan of Action- in Geneva that took effect on January 20, 2014 and expired six months later. They later extended the deal until November 24, 2014.
After failing to hammer out a lasting accord by the self-imposed November 24 deadline, the parties once again decided to extend the deadline for more seven months.