TEHRAN -- Iran said on Sunday it will not accept any deadline set by the West to revive its 2015 nuclear deal and wants “politically-motivated” claims by UN agency IAEA about Tehran’s nuclear work to be dropped.
“We have answered the agency’s (IAEA) questions or politically-motivated claims ... that we think were baseless. These dossiers should be closed,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said.
“Iran accepts no deadlines,” Khatibzadeh said, in apparent reaction to media reports that the United States had set a deadline for the talks in the Austrian capital Vienna.
Asked about how optimistic he is about Iran clinching an agreement with the opposite side, Khatibzadeh said, “More than talking about optimism or pessimism in our negotiations, we must be realist.”
“At the present time, we are at a point where the Vienna talks need a new political decision by the United States and other Western parties,” he said.
“If the opposite sides respect reasonable and legitimate redlines of the Islamic Republic of Iran and take political decisions, they can be sure that finalizing an agreement will be possible in the shortest possible time.”
Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani was to return to Vienna on Sunday evening for the talks, the official IRNA news agency reported.
Bagheri Kani, who flew to Tehran last week for consultations with Iranian officials, will “pursue the negotiations with a clear agenda aimed at resolving” the remaining issues, IRNA said.
Iran has made clear it wants an end to the oil and banking sanctions that are hurting its economy, while insisting also on the removal of so-called human rights and terrorism-related restrictions.
On Saturday, Iranian Foreign Minister Hussein Amir-Abdollahian said Tehran was ready to “immediately conclude” a deal if Western countries showed real will.
Ambir-Abdollahin is due on Tuesday to report to the Iranian parliament on the progress of the talks, local media said.
On Sunday, Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) discussed the results of the Vienna talks and stressed the importance of ensuring the Islamic Republic’s legal and rational demands based on the country’s redlines, Nour News reported.
The council also stressed “the need to quickly resolve the remaining issues that have put the negotiations hamstrung between an agreement and a dead end”.
The body stressed that the acceptance of any agreement depends on the settlement of the outstanding issues.
On Friday, a senior U.S. State Department official said negotiators had made significant progress
in the past week or so on reviving the deal but very tough issues remained.
The pact was abandoned in 2018 by then-U.S. President Donald Trump, who also reimposed extensive sanctions on Iran.
The Vienna talks began last April between Iran and the five remaining parties to the JCPOA — Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China — on the assumption that the U.S., under the Joe Biden administration, is willing to repeal the so-called maximum pressure policy pursued by his predecessor, Donald Trump.
Tehran says it won’t settle for anything less than the removal of all U.S. sanctions in a verifiable manner. It also wants guarantees that Washington would not abandon the agreement again.
In a Saturday phone call, Amir-Abdollahian told EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell that Iran seeks a good agreement, but is determined not to cross its redlines.
“It is the Islamic Republic’s final decision not to cross its redlines,” the minister said.
Bagheri Kani has also said there is no guarantee that negotiators would be able to cross the “finish line” without “certain decisions” by the West.
“Being near the finish line is no guarantee for crossing that. It requires extra caution, much perseverance, additional creativity and a balanced approach to take the last step,” he said, adding, “To finish the job, there are certain decisions that our Western interlocutors need to take.”
Head of the Russian negotiating team Mikhail Ulyanov said in a post on his Twitter account on Sunday that the five remaining parties to the JCPOA are waiting to finalize an agreement with Iran on the deal’s restoration.
“We are waiting for the return of the Iranian chief negotiator Dr. A. Bagheri Kani to Vienna from Tehran to finalize the agreement on restoration of JCPOA,” he tweeted.