Iran rules out endless negotiations over n-deal revival

Iran president-elect Ebrahim Raisi


Iran will not negotiate endlessly over the revival of the 2015 nuclear deal, a top official said here, while also urging the US to abandon the “failed legacy” of former President Donald Trump.

The remarks were made on Saturday for Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh in a tweet, reports Xinhua news agency.

Iran has actively participated in the Vienna talks aimed at the revival of the nuclear agreement, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which the US tried to “destroy”, Khatibzadeh added.

Since April 6, Washington and Teheran have had six rounds of indirect negotiations in Austria’s capital Vienna aimed at reviving the nuclear deal.

A US State Department official said last week that the two countries still have serious differences “over a host of issues, whether it’s the nuclear steps that Iran needs to take, the sanctions relief that the US would be offering or the sequence of steps that both sides will be taking”.

The official suggested that a deal between the two sides remains possible, saying the US team would attend the seventh round of talks “sometime in the not too distant future”.

The US government withdrew from the JCPOA in May 2018 and unilaterally re-imposed sanctions on Iran.

In response, Iran gradually suspended parts of its JCPOA commitments from May 2019.