TEHRAN -- President Ebrahim Raisi said on Saturday that Iran is serious in its talks with the remaining signatories of the 2015 nuclear deal to remove sanctions on the Islamic Republic.
Talks to revive the deal resumed on Thursday in the Austrian capital. Diplomats from France, Britain, Germany, Russia and China are negotiating how to bring the U.S. back to compliance which former president Donald Trump spurned in 2018.
Last week, Iran submitted two draft proposals to the other parties concerning the removal of sanctions and Tehran’s nuclear commitments.
Iran wants all sanctions imposed by Washington after it left the deal to be removed in a verifiable process. It began scaling down its compliance with the nuclear deal about a year after the U.S. withdrawal, during which Tehran patiently waited for the remaining parties to compensate the Islamic Republic and protect it from the sanctions as per the agreement, but to no avail.
“The fact that we presented the text of Iran’s proposal to the negotiating parties shows that we are serious in the talks, and if the other side is also serious about the removal of sanctions, we will achieve a good agreement. We are definitely after a good agreement,” President Raisi said Saturday.
The talks resumed on Thursday, after a break which the Europeans had requested in order to take Iran’s draft proposals to their capitals for discussion.
A source close to the Vienna talks was quoted by Press TV as saying Saturday that the negotiations held overnight and Friday were based on the draft proposals submitted by the Iranian team last week.
Iran’s top negotiator, Ali Bagheri Kani, has also stressed that Tehran is sticking to the stance it laid out last week.
When asked whether the new draft proposals were being discussed with major powers, Bagheri Kani said Friday: “Yes, the drafts we proposed last week are being discussed now in meetings with other parties.”
A senior European Union official said on Friday the talks were moving forward and that various key matters were still open for a deal on a final text, Reuters reported.
On Saturday, Bagheri stressed that Tehran will not accept anything less than the 2015 nuclear agreement.
“We will definitely agree to nothing less than that agreement and this will certainly be a red line for the Islamic Republic of Iran,” he told Press TV.
“We have an agreement that was finalized by Iran and the P5+1 in 2015.

The U.S. withdrew from it a few years later and now it wants to rejoin that deal. So, this agreement is a shared basis between the two sides.”
Bagheri said several points of difference have remained unresolved in the draft text that was the outcome of the six rounds of talks held between April and June, adding that they required decision-making at the highest levels.
The remaining issues, which are not too many, “will form the core of serious negotiations at the level of senior negotiators of Iran and the P4+1 countries,” he said, adding some of Iran’s proposals have been accepted by the opposite side and some have not.
Asked about the prospects of Iran-U.S. negotiations, Bagheri refused to make any “prejudgments”, saying Iran is still waiting to see what the Americans will do in practice.
“In the new round of talks, we will make no prejudgments about the conduct of the Americans. We are waiting to see their new approach in this round and will then make judgments accordingly,” he said.
President Raisi said the U.S. strategy is to keep and expand the shadow of sanctions on the Iranian nation, adding Iran should primarily focus on defusing and breaking the impact of the bans.
His administration, Raisi said, is doing its best to thwart the impact of the sanctions. “Our decision with regard to oil sales and financial resources are geared toward managing the country on the assumption that the sanctions would continue.”
The president pointed to serious efforts to establish better ties with neighboring countries, saying Tehran needs to develop an appropriate view about its neighbors and look at them as opportunities, not threats.
Maintaining good relations with the regional countries is what will culminate into security in our region, he added.