Antony blinken, the head of American diplomacy, arrived in Italy as the last stop on his European tour. Today, for the first time in Italy, the plenary ministerial meeting on Anti-Daesh coalition, will be co-chaired by Di Maio e flash. We will also talk about Syria and humanitarian aid to be allocated to the country struggling with a long civil war. Blinken will then go to the Vatican State for a meeting with Pope Francis where he will discuss the common commitment to freedom of belief and religion and to tackle the climate crisis. Today he will also go to the Quirinale and Palazzo Chigi to meet President Mattarella and Prime Minister Draghi. Tomorrow the head of the US State Department will go to Matera to participate in the Foreign Ministerial of the G20, in an enlarged format that reflects the issues on the agenda, from the commitment in favor of multilateralism to the fight against the Covid pandemic, up to the climate crisis.
"Happy to be in Italy to underline the importance of transatlantic unity and the strong US-Italy relationship“, Tweeted Blinken, as soon as he arrived in Rome. Still via tweet he wrote: "Glad to have met the Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio. We are committed to cooperating with Italy on the priorities of the G20 and on a series of urgent international security and stabilization issues ". Blinken also took the opportunity to meet the Israeli Foreign Minister in Rome, Yair Lapid, with whom he spoke, among other things, about the Iranian dossier and about the negotiations underway to relaunch the international agreement on nuclear power. Lapid expressed serious reservations on the agreement signed in Vienna but ensured a more collaborative approach with Washington, acknowledging that "mistakes have been made in the past few years, we will fix them together".
The Vienna talks. The fifth round of talks in Vienna took place after the International Atomic Energy Agency and Iran extended the agreement to monitor nuclear activities by one month until the end of June. of Tehran, which allows the IAEA to collect and analyze images captured by a series of surveillance cameras placed at nuclear activity sites in Iran. Ulyanov called this arrangement "commendable", as the extension could facilitate the relaunch of the JCPOA and the creation of a professional atmosphere during the Vienna talks.
The Vienna talks see the participation of a "Mixed Commission", made up of delegates from Iran, China, Russia, Germany, France and the United Kingdom. A US delegation, led by the US special envoy to Iran, Robert Malley, also went to Vienna since April, but did not take part in the meeting with the other countries, as Tehran refused to negotiate direct with Washington until sanctions are completely lifted. During the meetings, three distinct working commissions were formed, aimed at determining the US sanctions to be lifted, the nuclear obligations that Iran will have to fulfill and coordinating the moves of each side.
Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. It was signed during the administration of Barack Obama, on July 14, 2015, in Vienna, by Iran, China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany and the European Union. It provides for the suspension of all nuclear sanctions previously imposed against Iran by the European Union, the UN and the USA, in exchange for the limitation of nuclear activities by Tehran and inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency at the Iranian plants. On May 8, 2018, during the presidency of Donald Trump, Washington unilaterally withdrew from the agreement, imposing new sanctions against Tehran which, on the one hand, aggravated the economic conditions of the Middle Eastern country, and, on the other hand, exacerbated the tensions between Iran and the United States. The US president, Biden, appears to be willing to relaunch the agreement, but, over the past few months, he has repeatedly reiterated how it is first necessary for Iran to abide by the 2015 pact to resume diplomatic efforts.