The Iranian flag flies in front of the headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, Austria on May 23, 2021. REUTERS / Leonhard Foeger /

VIENNA, Dec. 13 (Reuters) – The big powers and Iran have yet to get to work on talks to save the 2015 nuclear deal, which will soon become “an empty shell” with no progress, said de senior British, French and German diplomats on Monday.

“For now, we still have not been able to engage in real negotiations,” said the diplomats of the so-called E3 in a statement on the nuclear negotiations in Vienna in which they are shuttling between US officials and Iranians.

“Time is running out. Without rapid progress, given Iran’s rapid advance in its nuclear program, the JCPOA will very soon become an empty shell,” they added, referring to the agreement, whose name complete is the Joint Global Plan of Action.

The statement offered a pessimistic assessment of efforts to revive the deal under which Iran had limited its nuclear program in return for relief from economic sanctions by the United States, the European Union and the United Nations.

Then-Republican President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the deal in 2018 and reimposed US sanctions, prompting Iran to start violating its nuclear restrictions in 2019.

His successor, Democrat Joe Biden, has called for a mutual return to compliance with the deal via indirect talks with Iran in which officials from other parties to the deal shuttle between them because Tehran refuses to meet directly from US officials.

The other countries in the agreement are Great Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia.

Diplomats said they made significant progress during the six rounds of negotiations between April and June, when talks took a five-month hiatus after the election of hardline cleric Ebrahim Raisi as president of the ‘Iran.

In the seventh round, which began on November 29, Iran abandoned all the compromises it had made in the previous six, pocketed those made by others and demanded more, a senior US official said. .

“We are wasting precious time dealing with new Iranian positions incompatible with the JCPoA or which go beyond,” E3 diplomats said in their statement.

“It’s frustrating because the outline for a comprehensive and fair deal that removes all JCPoA-related sanctions, while addressing our non-proliferation concerns, is clearly visible – and has been since last summer.” , they added.

Report by François Murphy; Writing by François Murphy and Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Mark Porter and Jonathan Oatis

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