Iran: No Agreement Until U.S. Removes Sanctions

Date: 21 February 2022 - 22:17

News ID: ۱۰۰۲۸۳

TEHRAN -- Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi said Monday that talks in Vienna to revive the 2015 nuclear deal cannot succeed unless the United States is prepared to remove sanctions.
“The United States must prove its will to remove major sanctions,” Raisi said in a joint news conference with Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani in Doha.
“To reach an agreement, guarantees are necessary for negotiations and nuclear issues.”
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said that “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed” in the Vienna talks. “The remaining issues are the hardest,” he told a weekly press briefing.
Khatibzadeh said that Iran’s top security body, the Supreme National Security Council, handles the Vienna talks. It reports directly to Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei.
The council’s secretary Ali Shamkhani ruled out talks with the United States, saying they are not on the agenda of representatives from the Islamic Republic.
Diplomats from Iran and the five remaining signatories to the 2015 deal – Britain, France, Russia, and China plus Germany –have been negotiating directly in the Austrian capital with the aim of reviving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
“This path will continue unchanged until a result is reached,” Shamkhani tweeted on Monday.
Iran, he said, has strictly refused to hold any talks with the United States because they cannot contribute to the Vienna talks.
“Negotiation with U.S. is not on the agenda of Iranian team because it will not be the source of any progress,” he wrote.
The United States left the JCPOA in 2018 and began to implement what it called the “maximum pressure” campaign of sanctions against the Islamic Republic.
Current U.S. government officials have characterized the policy an “abject failure” but they have followed in the footsteps of

their predecessors in practice.
Khatibzadeh said Monday “difficult” negotiations are underway on the economic guarantees that the U.S. must provide to Iran.
“We are still awaiting decisions that Europe and the U.S. must make,” he said, noting that Tehran has not seen a willingness to make their minds yet.
The spokesman further brushed aside Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett’s claim of an imminent agreement in Vienna, saying statements made by Zionist leaders are part of “a psychological war”.
“What the Zionist regime’s rulers are saying is intended for Washington and European capitals,” he said.