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Iran, European Countries Hold ‘Frank, Constructive’ Talks to Break Nuclear Stalemate

Majid Takht-Ravanchi briefs Iran’s National Security Committee on the results of the second round of dialogue with the European countries early last month. (Iranian parliament)
Majid Takht-Ravanchi briefs Iran’s National Security Committee on the results of the second round of dialogue with the European countries early last month. (Iranian parliament)
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Iran, European Countries Hold ‘Frank, Constructive’ Talks to Break Nuclear Stalemate

Majid Takht-Ravanchi briefs Iran’s National Security Committee on the results of the second round of dialogue with the European countries early last month. (Iranian parliament)
Majid Takht-Ravanchi briefs Iran’s National Security Committee on the results of the second round of dialogue with the European countries early last month. (Iranian parliament)

Talks between Iran and European powers in Geneva regarding Tehran's disputed nuclear program were serious, frank and constructive, high level Iranian diplomats said, just a week before US President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

European Union diplomat Enrique Mora said he held a “constructive meeting” with Iranian deputy foreign ministers Kazem Gharibabadi and Majid Takht-Ravanchi in Geneva on “exploring ways for a diplomatic solution to the nuclear issue.”

For his part, Gharibabadi posted on X that he and Takht-Ravanchi held open and constructive discussions with Mora and his team.

“We exchanged views mainly on nuclear and sanctions lifting as well as other issues of mutual interest,” he wrote.

“We also addressed Europe’s support for Israeli crimes in Gaza,” Gharibabadi said.

The Iranian delegation and the three European powers, Britain, France and Germany, known as the E3, met in Geneva on Monday.

“Against a challenging context, we discussed concerns and reiterated our commitment to a diplomatic solution. We agreed to continue our dialogue,” they said in a statement posted on their X accounts.

Before the meeting with the Iranian delegation, the German foreign ministry told AFP that the talks were “not negotiations” while Iran said they were merely “consultations.”

Iran's ISNA news agency reported that the two Iranian diplomats and their counterparts from the E3 “discussed issues of mutual interest, including negotiations for lifting sanctions, the nuclear issue and the worrying situation in the region.”

It was the second round of such talks between Iran and the E3 in less than two months, following a discreet meeting in Geneva last November.

At that time, an Iranian official told Reuters that finalizing a roadmap with Europeans would “put the ball in the US court to revive or kill the nuclear deal.”

On Monday, Gharibabadi said in a post on X, “We discussed ideas involving certain details in the sanctions-lifting and nuclear fields that are needed for a deal.”

“Sides concurred that negotiations should be resumed and to reach a deal, all parties should create and maintain the appropriate atmosphere. We agreed to continue our dialogue,” he added.

Officials in Tehran fear that Trump will revive his maximum pressure strategy that sought to wreck Iran's economy to force the country to negotiate a deal on its nuclear program, ballistic missile program and regional activities.

In 2018, the US, led by then-President Trump, exited Iran's 2015 nuclear pact with six major powers and reimposed harsh sanctions on Iran.

That prompted Tehran to violate the pact's nuclear limits by rebuilding stockpiles of enriched uranium, refining it to higher fissile purity and installing advanced centrifuges to speed up output.

Indirect talks between US President Joe Biden’s administration and Tehran to try to revive the pact have failed.

Trump has vowed to return to the policy he pursued in his previous term.

Last December, a top Iranian diplomat warned Tehran would withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty after the E3 informed the UN Security Council their readiness to use all diplomatic tools to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, including using snapback.

The snapback mechanism - part of the 2015 deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) - allows signatories to reimpose United Nations sanctions on Iran in cases of the “significant non-performance” of commitments.

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Japan Marks 80th Anniversary of WWII Surrender as Concern Grows About Fading Memory

Japan's Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, left, walks to deliver a speech as Japan's Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako attend a memorial service marking the 80th anniversary of Japan's World War II defeat, at the Nippon Budokan hall Friday, Aug. 15, 2025, in Tokyo. (AP)
Japan's Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, left, walks to deliver a speech as Japan's Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako attend a memorial service marking the 80th anniversary of Japan's World War II defeat, at the Nippon Budokan hall Friday, Aug. 15, 2025, in Tokyo. (AP)
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Japan Marks 80th Anniversary of WWII Surrender as Concern Grows About Fading Memory

Japan's Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, left, walks to deliver a speech as Japan's Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako attend a memorial service marking the 80th anniversary of Japan's World War II defeat, at the Nippon Budokan hall Friday, Aug. 15, 2025, in Tokyo. (AP)
Japan's Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, left, walks to deliver a speech as Japan's Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako attend a memorial service marking the 80th anniversary of Japan's World War II defeat, at the Nippon Budokan hall Friday, Aug. 15, 2025, in Tokyo. (AP)

Japan is paying tribute to more than 3 million war dead as the country marks its surrender 80 years ago, ending the World War II, as concern grows about the rapidly fading memories of the tragedy of war and the bitter lessons from the era of Japanese militarism.

Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba expressed “remorse” over the war, which he called a mistake, restoring the word in a Japanese leader's Aug. 15 address for the first time since 2013, when former premier Shinzo Abe shunned it.

Ishiba, however, did not mention Japan's aggression across Asia or apologize.

“We will never repeat the tragedy of the war. We will never go the wrong way,” Ishiba said. “Once again, we must deeply keep to our hearts the remorse and lesson from that war.”

In a national ceremony Friday at Tokyo's Budokan hall, about 4,500 officials and bereaved families and their descendants from around the country observed a moment of silence at noon, the time when the then-emperor's surrender speech began on Aug. 15, 1945.

Just a block away at Yasukuni Shrine, seen by Asian neighbors as a symbol of militarism, dozens of Japanese rightwing politicians and their supporters came to pray.

Ishiba stayed away from Yasukuni and sent a religious ornament as a personal gesture instead of praying at the controversial shrine.

But Shinjiro Koizumi, the agriculture minister considered as a top candidate to replace the beleaguered prime minister, prayed at the shrine. Koizumi, the son of popular former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi whose Yasukuni visit as a serving leader in 2001 outraged China, is a regular at the shrine.

Rightwing lawmakers, including former economic security ministers Sanae Takaichi and Takayuki Kobayashi, as well as governing Liberal Democratic Party heavyweight Koichi Hagiuda, also visited the shrine Friday.

The shrine honors convicted war criminals, among about 2.5 million war dead. Victims of Japanese aggression, especially China and the Koreas, see visits to the shrine as a lack of remorse about Japan's wartime past.

Japanese emperors have stopped visiting the Yasukuni site since the enshrinement of top war criminals there in 1978.

Emperor Naruhito, in his address at the Budokan memorial Friday, expressed his earnest hope that the ravages of war will never be repeated while “reflecting on our past and bearing in mind the feelings of deep remorse.”

Naruhito reiterated the importance of telling the war’s tragic history and the ordeals faced during and after the war to younger generations as “we continue to seek the peace and happiness of the people in the future.”

As part of the 80th anniversary remembrance, he has traveled to Iwo Jima, Okinawa and Hiroshima, and is expected to visit Nagasaki with his daughter, Princess Aiko, in September.

Hajime Eda, whose father died on his way home from Korea when his ship was hit by a mine, said he will never forget his father and others who never made it home. In his speech representing the bereaved families, Eda said it is Japan's responsibility to share the lesson — the emptiness of the conflict, the difficulty of reconstruction and the preciousness of peace.

There was some hope at the ceremony, with a number of teenagers participating after learning about their great-grandfathers who died in the battlefields.

Among them, Ami Tashiro, a 15-year-old high school student from Hiroshima, said she joined a memorial marking the end of the battle on Iwo Jima in April after reading a letter her great-grandfather sent from the island. She also hopes to join in the search for his remains.

As the population of wartime generations rapidly decline, Japan faces serious questions on how it should pass on the wartime history to the next generation, as the country has already faced revisionist pushbacks under Abe and his supporters in the 2010s.

Since 2013, Japanese prime ministers stopped apologizing to Asian victims, under the precedent set by Abe.

Some lawmakers' denial of Japan's military role in massive civilian deaths on Okinawa or the Nanking Massacre have stirred controversy.

In an editorial Friday, the Mainichi newspaper noted that Japan's pacifist principle was mostly about staying out of global conflict, rather than thinking how to make peace, and called the country to work together with Asian neighbors as equal partners.

“It's time to show a vision toward ‘a world without war’ based on the lesson from its own history,” the Mainichi said.