Iran resumes nuclear talks with Europe: rapprochements with Germany, France, and the United Kingdom confirmed on Friday in Istanbul.

Iran confirmed it will hold new talks on its nuclear program with Germany, France, and the United Kingdom on Friday in Istanbul, although it blamed European powers on Monday for the failure of the 2015 nuclear deal.

In 2015, Tehran reached a historic agreement with the United States and those three European powers, as well as China and Russia, establishing significant restrictions on Iran's nuclear program in exchange for a gradual lifting of UN sanctions.

But in 2018, during Donald Trump's first term (2017-2021), the United States unilaterally withdrew from this long-negotiated text and reimposed its sanctions.

Paris, London, and Berlin asserted that they remained committed to the agreement and that they were willing to trade with Iran. UN and European sanctions, in fact, were not reinstated.

But the plan envisaged by European countries to compensate for the return of US sanctions has struggled to materialize, and many Western companies have been forced to leave Iran , which is facing high inflation and an economic crisis.

In a statement on Monday, the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman escalated his criticism of the three European powers, accusing them of the failure of the 2015 agreement.

"The European parties have been culpable and negligent in implementing" the nuclear deal, said spokesman Esmail Baqai.

These comments come ahead of a meeting on Friday in Istanbul, Turkey, between Iran and representatives of France, the United Kingdom, and Germany to discuss the nuclear issue. The meeting was confirmed Monday by the Iranian Foreign Ministry.

The three European countries have accused Tehran of breaching its nuclear commitments and are threatening to reimpose sanctions under a clause in the agreement that Iran is trying to avoid at all costs.

Pending the meeting in Turkey, a "trilateral consultation" with Russia and China will be held in Tehran on Tuesday to discuss the nuclear issue and the threat of a possible reintroduction of sanctions, Baghai added.

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iran is the only non-nuclear-weapons country that enriches uranium at a high level (60%), well above the 3.67% limit set by the 2015 international agreement.

To build a bomb, enrichment must reach 90%, according to the IAEA.

Resorting to this mechanism "is senseless, unjustifiable, and immoral," Esmail Baqai declared at a weekly press conference, arguing that Iran had withdrawn from the agreement in retaliation for Western noncompliance.

Western countries, led by the United States, and Israel, a staunch enemy of the Islamic Republic, have long suspected that Iran wants to acquire an atomic bomb, something Tehran denies, insisting on its right to develop a nuclear program solely for civilian purposes.

Iran and the United States had held five rounds of nuclear talks since April, before Israel launched a surprise attack on Iran on June 13, triggering a 12-day war.

The United States joined the Israeli offensive, attacking the Natanz, Fordo, and Isfahan nuclear plants on June 22.

Iranian and US representatives were scheduled to meet on June 15, but the talks were canceled due to the war. "At this time, we have no intention of speaking with the United States," Esmail Baqai said on Monday.

A German diplomatic source previously indicated that Berlin, Paris, and London were continuing to "work intensively... to find a lasting and verifiable diplomatic solution to Iran's nuclear program" and that they planned to meet later this week.

In parallel, Russian President Vladimir Putin received Ali Larijani, a senior advisor to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, at the Kremlin on Sunday to discuss the nuclear issue.

Larijani "expressed his assessments of the worsening situation in the Middle East and the Iranian nuclear program," said Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

Putin expressed Russia's "well-known positions on how to stabilize the situation in the region and on the political settlement of Iran's nuclear program ," he added.