VIENNA (Dispatches) -- Iran’s atomic energy chief, who attended an international conference in Vienna, told NHK that the United States should remove all its sanctions against his country.
Tehran’s nuclear program topped the agenda at the general meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency that kicked off on Monday.
The head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Muhammad Eslami, stressed that the U.S. should rectify its wrong policies.
Eslami later told NHK that the U.S. has failed to implement the duties and obligations it agreed to in the 2015 nuclear pact.
He added that the U.S. should remove all its sanctions and quickly come back to the agreement. He said Iran will take action step by step, in accordance with what the U.S. does.
The U.S. administration under Donald Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018 and reimposed sanctions on Tehran.
The Biden administration began indirect talks with Iran in April to salvage the deal. But the negotiations have stalled due to Washington’s insistence to keep the core elements of the sanctions regime in place as a tool of pressure on Tehran.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said on Tuesday that talks over reviving the nuclear deal would resume in a few weeks.
“Every meeting requires prior coordination and the preparation of an agenda. As previously emphasized, the Vienna talks will resume soon and over the next few weeks,” he said.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, however, told reporters that ministers from Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia will not meet with Iran at the United Nations this week.
Diplomats were tentatively planning for a ministerial meeting of the parties to the 2015 nuclear deal on Wednesday on the sidelines of the annual UN gathering of world leaders.
“Some years it happens, some years it doesn’t happen. It’s not in the agenda,” said Borrell, who acts as coordinator for the nuclear deal - known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
“But the important thing is not this ministerial meeting, but the will of all parties to resume negotiations in Vienna,” he said, adding that he would meet with his new Iranian counterpart Hussein Amir-Abdollahian on Tuesday.
The Vienna talks were adjourned in June after Ebrahim Raisi was elected Iran’s president and took office in August. Borrell said he would push Amir-Abdollahian on Tuesday to resume talks as soon as possible.
“After the elections the new presidency asked for the delay in order to take fully take stock of the negotiations and understand better everything about this very sensitive file,” Borrell said. “The summer
has already passed by and we expect that the talks can be resuming soon in Vienna.”
French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said earlier on Monday that the negotiations must restart. “We need to take advantage of this week to restart these talks. Iran must accept to return as quickly as possible by appointing its representatives for the negotiations,” he said.

Center for Verification

The Research Center of the Islamic Legislative Assembly on Tuesday called for the formation of a state institution tasked with verifying the removal of the sanctions.
In a report, the center said the institution could be similar to Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) or the Supreme Supervisory Board for the Implementation of the JCPOA, or even a completely new body with its own organizational structure and secretariat.
It proposed that the new state institution compile periodic reports on the verification of the sanctions removal so as for Tehran to either adhere to the JCPOA, or to take a reciprocal measure and reduce or suspend its commitments.
The center highlighted that the verification body should present its reports to the Supreme Supervisory Board for the Implementation of the JCPOA.
The proposed institution, it said, should monitor and analyze benefits to Iran’s economy after the removal of the sanctions and enable any Iranian citizen or institution especially those removed from the sanctions list to seek compensation.
The agency should also devise mechanisms aimed at suspending, ceasing or scaling back activity and their practical implementation in case of non-compliance by other signatories of the JCPOA, it added.