TEHRAN -- Iran may hold talks on restoring the 2015 nuclear deal with its signatories on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly next week, Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said here Sunday.
Foreign Minister Hussein Amir-Abdollahian will leave for New York on Monday and will meet with representatives of the nuclear deal member-states “if such meetings will be useful,” Khatibzadeh told reporters in a press conference.
“Regarding the P4+1 meeting, I would like to emphasize that if we see this meeting can be in the direction of useful negotiation, we will make a decision. We have not made a decision now,” he said.
“What is important is that the foreign minister will have bilateral meetings with all the P4+1 foreign ministers. If there was a special agenda, it could be held collectively between Iran and the P4+1, but no decision has been made yet.”
He added that Amir-Abdollahian has no plans to meet U.S. officials in New York but will hold separate meetings with the foreign ministers of the countries that remain part of the landmark accord.
Khatibzadeh said so far, about 45 bilateral meetings Amir-Abdollahian and foreign ministers of countries from different continents have been arranged.
The planned visit comes amid a pause in Vienna talks between Iranian and P4+1 delegations on a potential revival of the 2015 nuclear deal, formally called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
Former U.S. president Donald Trump left the JCPOA in May 2018 and re-imposed the anti-Iran sanctions that the deal had lifted. He also placed additional sanctions on Iran under other pretexts not related to the nuclear case as part of the “maximum pressure” campaign.
Following a year of strategic patience, Iran resorted to its legal rights stipulated in Article 26 of the JCPOA, which grants a party the right to suspend its contractual commitments in case of non-compliance by other signatories, and let go of some of the restrictions imposed on its nuclear energy program.
Now, the new U.S. administration under President Joe Biden says it wants to compensate for Trump’s mistake and rejoin the deal, but it is showing an overriding propensity for maintaining

some of the sanctions as a tool of pressure.
Tehran insists that all sanctions should first be removed in a verifiable manner before the Islamic Republic reverses its remedial measures.
Elsewhere in his remarks, Khatibzadeh said Iran’s recent permanent membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) marks “the virtual failure of the project by some parties, including the United States, to isolate Iran.”
“The Shanghai Cooperation Organization has enormous capacities to use. Both the SCO and Iran can utilize mutual capacities to improve relations and the position of the organization. Iran’s membership in the SCO will make the organization stronger. The internal mechanisms of this organization are important to us and we are committed to improving these mechanisms through cooperation and assistance of the members,” he added.
On Friday, the Islamic Republic was accepted as a full member of the SCO after waiting for years as an observer to join the Eurasian political, economic and security alliance.