Iran FM to attend nuclear talks in Geneva with France, Germany, UK, EU - Region
Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Thursday he would head to Geneva to attend talks on his country's nuclear programme with counterparts from key European powers France, Germany and Britain and the EU's top diplomat.
"We will meet with the European delegation in Geneva on Friday," he said in a statement carried by state news agency IRNA.
Foreign ministers from key European powers France, Germany and Britain and the EU's top diplomat are aiming to meet their Iranian counterpart for nuclear talks in Geneva on Friday, European diplomats said.
The meeting being planned comes as European countries, supporting Israeli aggression against Iran, now call for de-escalation.
The three countries were involved in talks that led to a landmark 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers, which curbed Tehran's nuclear activities in exchange for relief from sanctions.
US President Donald Trump has warned he is weighing a military attack against Iran's nuclear facilities as Israel pummels the country and Tehran responds with missile fire.
Israel says its air campaign is aimed at preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Tel Aviv has been claiming for at least the last two decades that Iran will acquire nuclear weapons "within months"
Iran had been enriching uranium to 60 percent -- far above the 3.67-percent limit set by a 2015 deal with international powers, still short of the 90-percent threshold needed for a nuclear warhead.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) accused Iran of a lack of cooperation just before the start of the Israeli attacks. The IAEA's board of governors then adopted a resolution censuring Iran for "non-compliance" with its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
However, the head of the agency, Rafael Grossi, had said, "we did not have any evidence of a systematic effort [by Iran] to move into a nuclear weapon.'
Israel has its own secretive nuclear weapons program, one that it doesn't publicly acknowledge but that, experts told the New York Times, is also expanding.
Israel is widely believed to have at least 90 warheads and enough fissile material to produce up to hundreds more, according to the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation and the Nuclear Threat Initiative.
According to the center, Israel could fire warheads from fighter jets, submarines or ballistic missile ground launchers.
Israel is one of five countries — joining India, Pakistan, North Korea and South Sudan — that is not a signatory to the UN Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The agreement, which came into force in 1970, generally commits governments to promoting peaceful uses of nuclear energy and preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. Israel would have to give up its nuclear weapons to sign the treaty, which recognizes only five countries as official nuclear states: Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — the permanent members of the UN Security Council.
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