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Bloomberg
Efforts by France and Iran to salvage the nuclear deal are gaining momentum as Tehran sends its special envoy back to Paris while signalling it could be edging closer to a plan to restore some of its oil exports.
On Monday President Hassan Rouhani’s special representative and deputy foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, will head an economic delegation on his second trip to France in less than six weeks, continuing the most substantive negotiations between Iran and a Western power since US President Donald Trump exited the 2015 nuclear deal last year.
According to Mahmoud Vaezi, Rouhani’s chief of staff, the talks will focus on a plan proposed by French President Emmanuel Macron to resolve the standoff between Washington and Tehran over the deal.
It follows a two-hour phone call between the two leaders in which they discussed banking, economic and political matters, Vaezi said on state TV.
Araghchi said that discussions between Trump and Macron at the G7 summit last week “have shown flexibility with regard to Iran’s oil,†according to the semi-official Iranian Students’ News Agency. Trump said at the meeting in Biarritz that he would support extending a letter of credit to Iran, secured against oil sales.
“Tehran will be extremely cautious about what Europeans can deliver on their own without a US green light,’’ said Ellie Geranmayeh, senior policy fellow and deputy head of the Mena program at the European Council on Foreign Relations.