Not in the room With the US still not directly involved in the negotiations, Yassamine Mather considers prospects for a revived nuclear deal After weeks of speculation, negotiations began on April 6 in Vienna between representatives of Iran, France, the UK, Germany, Russia, China and the EU. This is likely to be the first part of a lengthy and difficult process to bring the US back into the nuclear deal and pave the way for Iran’s reversal of its recent increase in the level of uranium enrichment. First indications that talks were underway came from US secretary of state Antony J Blinken, who informed European foreign ministers on April 2 that the United States would join them in seeking to restore the 2015 nuclear accord, which he said “was a key achievement of multilateral diplomacy”.