TEHRAN -- The United States needs to make a decision to revive the Iran nuclear deal, Tehran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Saeed Khatibzadeh said on Monday amid fears that talks in Vienna to revive a 2015 agreement may collapse.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Hussein Amir-Abdollahian will visit Russia on Tuesday, Khatibzadeh said, without elaborating. “We are currently having a breather from the nuclear talks,” he said.
“We are not at a point of announcing an agreement now since there are some important open issues that need to be decided upon by Washington.”
Ali Shamkhani, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, which makes the decisions in the Vienna talks, said in a tweet, “We will remain in the Vienna talks until our legal and logical demands are met and a strong agreement is reached.”
He reiterated the firm determination of Iranian officials to safeguard the country’s national interests despite all external and internal hype.
“All pillars of the Iranian state - in spite of all external and internal hype - work hard to preserve and advance Iran’s national interests,” he said.
On Sunday, Shakhani said Iran makes a proportionate use of both “field and diplomacy” to safeguard its security and national interests.
“Field and Diplomacy - as two components of Iran’s power - are used proportionally and judiciously to protect our security & national interests,” he tweeted.
He said that 40 years of experience has taught the Iranian nation that national rights and security would never be guaranteed by “relying on Western or Eastern powers”.
Shamkhani’s tweet came a few hours after Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) said it had carried out a retaliatory missile strike on the “strategic center of Zionist conspiracy and evil” in the northern Iraqi Kurdistan city of Erbil.
Shamkhani’s tweet also referred to Iran’s use of diplomacy in eight rounds of talks with the P4+1 group of countries on a possible revival of the landmark 2015 deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which was abandoned by the U.S. three years after its conclusion.