EU rejects attempts to derail process to revive Iran n-deal

EU Foreign Affairs spokesman Peter Stano told an online press conference on Monday that the reported incident in Natanz "could have been an act of sabotage", but insisted that there had been no official attribution over who was responsible, Xinhua news agency reported.

The Natanz uranium enrichment site near Tehran was hit by a power outage on Sunday as negotiators in Vienna were seeking to re-admit the US to the 2015 pact, officially known as Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), aimed at curbing Iran's nuclear ambitions, after former President Donald Trump withdrew in 2018.

"There has been no official attribution and there are several accusations that we are aware of, but it has to be clarified what happened and who is behind it. We still need to clarify the facts in detail as quickly as possible," he said.

Stano said that any attempt to derail the diplomatic negotiations underway in Vienna to salvage the JCPOA must be completely rejected.

"We reject any attempts to undermine, derail or weaken diplomatic efforts on the nuclear agreement... All issues concerning the nuclear program have to be resolved by diplomatic means because there is no other sustainable alternative," he stressed.

Two meetings of the JCPOA Joint Commission were held last week in Vienna, chaired by Enrique Mora, the deputy secretary general and political director of the EU External Service Action Service, and attended by representatives from China, France, Germany, Russia, the UK and Iran.

Washington sent a delegation led by US Special Envoy to Iran Robert Malley.

They did not meet their Iranian counterparts face-to-face, but a shuttle diplomacy approach was adopted with the intensified help of the coordinators.