Berlin (AFP) – Iran confirmed fresh talks with European powers to be held on Friday in Istanbul, the country's state media reported, the first since the United States attacked Iranian nuclear facilities a month ago.
Iranian diplomats will meet counterparts from Britain, France and Germany, known as the E3, after the trio warned that sanctions could be reimposed on Tehran if it does return to the negotiating table over its nuclear programme.
Western nations and Israel have long accused Iran of seeking to develop nuclear weapons, a charge Tehran has consistently denied.
"In response to the request of European countries, Iran has agreed to hold a new round of talks," said foreign ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghai, as quoted by state TV on Monday.
The subject of the talks will be Iran's nuclear programme, it added.
A German diplomatic source had told AFP on Sunday the E3 were in contact with Tehran and said "Iran must never be allowed to acquire a nuclear weapon".
"That is why Germany, France and the United Kingdom are continuing to work intensively in the E3 format to find a sustainable and verifiable diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear programme," the source said.
Also Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin held a surprise meeting in the Kremlin with Ali Larijani, top adviser to Iran's supreme leader on nuclear issues.
Larijani "conveyed assessments of the escalating situation in the Middle East and around the Iranian nuclear programme", Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said of the unannounced meeting.
Putin had expressed Russia's "well-known positions on how to stabilise the situation in the region and on the political settlement of the Iranian nuclear programme", he added.
Moscow has a cordial relationship with Iran's clerical leadership and provides crucial backing for Tehran but did not swing forcefully behind its partner even after the United States joined Israel's bombing campaign.
European countries have in recent days threatened to trigger the deal's "snapback" mechanism, which allows the reimposition of sanctions in the event of non-compliance by Iran.
After a call with his European counterparts on Friday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the Western allies had "absolutely no moral (or) legal grounds" for reactivating the snapback sanctions.
He elaborated in a post to social media Sunday.
"Through their actions and statements, including providing political and material support to the recent unprovoked and illegal military aggression of the Israeli regime and the US... the E3 have relinquished their role as 'Participants' in the JCPOA," said Araghchi.
That made any attempt to reinstate the terminated UN Security Council resolutions "null and void", he added.
"Iran has shown that it is capable of defeating any delusional 'dirty work' but has always been prepared to reciprocate meaningful diplomacy in good faith," Araghchi wrote.
However, the German source said Sunday that "if no solution is reached over the summer, snapback remains an option for the E3".
Ali Velayati, an adviser to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said last week there would be no new nuclear talks with the United States if they were conditioned on Tehran abandoning its uranium enrichment activities.