Iran Says Will Hold ‘High-Level Talks’ With EU

Earlier, Mogherini and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said they were exploring cooperation in key areas such as the fight against Islamic State militants now that the nuclear deal has been struck. In September, Austrian President Heinz Fischer plans to visit Iran, which would make him the first European head of state to do so since 2004.

As France’s chief diplomat in the nuclear negotiations, Fabius gained a reputation for taking a hawkish public stance on what Iran must do under an agreement to end the dispute over its nuclear programme. Riyadh is willing to use air power to provide cover for the anti-Assad Free Syrian Army, which now receives funding and arms from the Saudis, and to target “Hezbollah and Iranian targets”. How he will be received “will for us be an evaluation of Iran’s behaviour”, President Francois Hollande said on Monday. Last week, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker said that he wanted to be reassured that the United States still has the flexibility to impose non-nuclear sanctions on Iran for supporting terrorism, abusing human rights, and advancing its ballistic missile program.

Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir today denounced “aggressive statements” by Iran, after Tehran accused Saudi ally Bahrain of stoking Gulf tensions by making unfounded allegations against it.

“An Iranian admission of its past nuclear weapons program is unlikely and is not necessary for purposes of verifying commitments going forward”, said a White House document obtained by the WSJ.

The politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran is to always adopt dialogue, but unfortunately there was a cloud that was a result of the nuclear issue, however this cloud is beginning to disappear and now we may address our priorities and the [issues] between us in this region, by paving the way for regional cooperation.

“We discussed all these issues during our talks here in Riyadh”, she said.

Last Sunday, Bahrain summoned Iran’s acting charge d’affaires to protest against its supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei voicing support for “oppressed people” across the Middle East, including in Bahrain.

David Albright, whose Institute for Science and global Security is often consulted by the U.S. government on proliferation issues, said the IAEA “could instruct Iran in where and how to take the sample, as they would an inspector”. We need to restart political processes to end wars.

“If Iran provides by August 15 unsatisfactory answers about its past nuclear work related to nuclear weaponization and the development of a missile payload for a nuclear weapon, what happens?”

One of the big unanswered questions in the wake of the historic nuclear deal between a US-led group of countries and Iran had to do with the status of a side-agreement reached between the worldwide Atomic Energy Agency and Tehran.

Gulf rulers are also deeply critical of Iranian involvement in regional conflicts in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, and accuse Tehran of contributing to the increasingly bitter sectarian rift between Sunnis and Shi’ites.