TEHRAN – President Ebrahim Raisi vowed to tackle Iran’s economic woes and said his government is working to remove sanctions, in a television interview Sunday night marking his first 100 days in power.
Raisi, who took office in August, listed inflation, high prices and tax evasion as among the top challenges facing his government.
“The government is doing everything to achieve economic stability and a predictable market,” he said.
“Removing sanctions is being pursued with vigor,” he added, alluding to negotiations in Vienna that resumed last week, but noted that his government will not tie the economy or the annual budget to the elimination of the bans.
“The people are well-aware of the situation in the country when I took the reins of government,” the president said.
The president touched on Iran’s two draft proposals to which the Europeans have yet to respond.
“Iran’s opposite parties had thought that we would not participate in negotiations and would not have anything to say. They had thought that we do not have any initiatives,” Raisi said.
“Both of the documents perfectly match the contents of the JCPOA,” he said, referring by acronym to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the historic nuclear deal that was clinched between Iran and others in 2015.
President Raisi’s remarks were apparently meant to refute allegations by the UK, France, and Germany that Iran’s proposals are not in line with the JCPOA provisions.
The Europeans have been aligning themselves closely with the U.S. policy of “maximum pressure,” under which Washington left the JCPOA in 2018 and imposed the most draconian sanctions ever on Iran.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh insisted Monday that Iran isn’t after a “temporary” agreement from the negotiations, which he described as resuming “later this week.”
European officials have yet to announce a time for the talks to restart. Khatibzadeh said the exact date will be determined by Iran’s chief negotiator Ali Baqeri Kani and EU Deputy Secretary General Enrique Mora soon.
In Germany, a party to the nuclear deal, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman accused Iran of “breaking with almost all of the difficult compromises that were previously agreed upon during several months of hard negotiations”.
“In our view, this basis, combined with continued development of Iran’s nuclear program, is not a basis on which the talks can be brought to a promising conclusion,” Andrea Sasse said, calling

on Iran to return to the talks with what she called realistic proposals.
However, Iranian Foreign Minister Hussein Amir-Abdollahian insisted that Tehran has gone into negotiations in Vienna with “seriousness and good will.”
“We will seek no Plan B simultaneously as we negotiate,” he told journalists. “We will wait and try to make progress in removing the sanctions as desired by the nation through solid and powerful negotiations.”
Khatibzadeh said Iran has returned to the talks with an interactive and flexible attitude, but the other side has not.
He also berated claims by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken that Iran did not seem to be serious in the Vienna talks.
A country “that is not a member of the JCPOA, that has stopped all of its commitments, that has made every effort in recent years so that no one remains compliant with the JCPOA, and that has punished those who honored the deal is in no position to make such remarks,” the Iranian spokesman said.
“The U.S., rather than playing some sort of a blame game to shirk its responsibility, should return to the easier way and return to its commitments under what they signed in 2015,” he added.