TEHRAN -- Iran wants the removal of all sanctions in a verifiable process, its foreign minister said on Friday, three days before talks resume in Vienna.
Monday’s talks between Iran and the remaining signatories to a 2015 nuclear deal aim to bringing the U.S. into full compliance. Washington abandoned the accord in 2018 and reimposed inhuman sanctions on Iran.
“If the opposing sides are prepared to return to their full obligations and the removal of sanctions, a good and even immediate agreement can be reached,” minister Hussein Amir-Abdollahian said in a telephone conversation with the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Joseph Borrell.
“Iran wants a good and verifiable agreement,” he added.
Amir-Abdollahian told Borrell that Iran would attend the Vienna talks in “good faith” - despite the U.S. violation of the 2015 agreement.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh stressed all U.S. sanctions must be removed together, rejecting the idea of an “interim agreement”.
“All U.S. sanctions must be removed in one go, effectively and verifiably with [the U.S.] providing concrete guarantees” that it would not leave the nuclear deal again, he said Friday.
Last week, U.S.-based Axios news outlet reported that U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan had raised with his Israeli counterpart the idea of an “interim agreement” with Iran to buy more time for further negotiations.
Citing informed U.S. sources, Axios said the idea was that in exchange for a freeze from Iran - for example, on enriching uranium to 60% - the U.S. and its allies could release some frozen Iranian funds or provide sanctions waivers on humanitarian goods.
Khatibzadeh said the new Iranian administration of Ebrahim Raisi has clearly singled out the Islamic Republic’s position.
Iran has declared that its participation in the Vienna talks aims to have all U.S. sanctions removed, clarifying time and again that it would reciprocate a verifiable removal of the sanctions by resuming all of its nuclear obligations under the deal.
Iran’s top negotiator Ali Baqeri Kani stressed that any progress must be preceded by the scrapping of all American sanctions, and a guarantee that a future administration in Washington will not once again renege on the agreement as Trump had done.
Speaking to British daily The Independent, Baqeri Kani complained that the Biden administration is repeating some of the mistakes of its predecessor and continuing with the “failed policy” of “maximum pressure” on Tehran.
The meeting in Vienna follows the election of President Raisi last summer in the Iranian presidential election, which was followed by a pause in the talks which had been going on between Tehran and the

other signatory states – Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China.
There is widespread recognition among other signatory states that the JCPOA will not properly function unless the U.S. rejoins the deal. An American team will be at the Austrian capital, but will not attend the talks, because the country is not a party to the nuclear deal.
But, Baqeri Kani told The Independent: “The removal of all JCPOA related sanctions such as the sanctions imposed within the framework of ‘maximum pressure’ campaign is the necessary condition for success of the negotiations.”
“Demanding guarantees from the other party not to exit the deal, not to impose and enforce new sanctions, and not to reinstate and reapply the previous sanctions is aimed at neutralizing the possibility that political chaos in the United States could have an impact on its international behavior,” he said.
The Biden administration, The Independent wrote, would consider stating that it would not leave the JCPOA if it rejoined, but would say it is incapable of putting such strictures on future administrations.
Tehran says the Biden administration is not taking the necessary steps to kickstart the talks. Baqeri Kani said: “Regrettably, the failed policy of pursuing the maximum pressure campaign, which began in the Trump administration, remains in the agenda of the Biden administration.
“President Biden needs to remove the sanctions in order to relieve himself of what we see as political bewilderment and the pursuit of failed and inhumane policies of the Trump administration.”
While failing to advance the Vienna talks, the Biden’s administration’s actions on another major foreign policy concern, retreating from Afghanistan, have damaged its credibility in the Middle East and helped Iran’s relations with countries in the region, Baqeri Kani maintained.
“The U.S. escape from Afghanistan demonstrated yet another instance where the United States is not a reliable partner for anyone. We are in close, constant and intense dialogue with countries of the region,” he said.